HONK! HONK! HONK!
As I was walking back to the office from lunch I walked past two cars whose alarms were vexing passersby. I got to think that those of us that live in a city walk past cars parked in garages, side streets, driveways, etc where the alarms are going off quite frequently. Whether someone has or has not touched/broken into/smashed to bits these cars, the alarms are an annoyance to all around. Quite often the owner of the car is nowhere to be found and the people around are left to just shrug and keep walking. After all, they aren't our cars, what are we supposed to do?
Why don't auto alarm manufacturers include some sort of cell signal into the car alarm? Why isn't there some form of notification for the car's owner if they aren't standing next to the car? How hard would it actually be to include a signal that either calls your cell or transmits an alert to your key fob? Several of my friends live in buildings where someone ringing their doorbell calls their cell phone so they can determine (no matter where they are in the world) who has come to see them and whether to give them access to the building. Can't a system like this be devised for auto alarms so that the owners can have an accountability for their car alarms? Right now the usefulness of a car alarm is limited to the owner being within earshot creating a system of false safety. Besides, it would be nice for those of us commonly irked by the loud HONK HONK HONK to think the owner will have to drop whatever they are doing and come fix the situation.