JEDDAH, 25 November 2004 — For many residents, car alarms are annoying-especially when they go off in the middle of the night. But do they do the job of protecting cars from theft? With car thefts on the rise, people are trying to find ways of keeping their cars safe — not just from theft but also from being broken into.

“These car alarms are useless,” said Ahmed to Arab News. “They sound off for no reason — when someone sits on the car or simply passes by. Some car owners set the sensitivity of the alarm too high, so that it sounds all the time. They just disturb the neighborhood with all that noise,” he said.

For some car owners, security outweighs a little racket.

“I don’t care if my neighbors are disturbed by the noise as long as it scares the thieves or potential thieves away,” said Hatim.

Unfortunately, most people have become immune to the noise of a sounding alarm. They simply ignore it, which makes thieves bolder in approaching a car.

Ibrahim used to turn on the car alarm when he lived in Bawadi, not considered a very safe area, and it would sound many times as neighborhood kids played nearby or someone tried to break in. Although it was disturbing, and he had to go down to the apartment parking lot to switch it off, he felt it was necessary.

When he moved to Al-Naeem, supposedly a better neighborhood, he wasn’t as concerned about setting the alarm all the time. But one morning in the time the family driver finished cleaning the car and went to get ready to take the children to school, within 15 minutes, he found the passenger-side window smashed and the car ransacked. “I don’t know if the car alarm would have prevented the vandal from breaking the window, but it might have deterred from stealing what’s inside,” he said to Arab News.

“Clearly this was a professional thief, and he was waiting for the opportunity to break into the car. I know that the same thing happened to two other cars in this neighborhood within the past few weeks, which is scary,” he added.

Most cars today are sold with a built-in alarm, especially the expensive models, and many dealers offer to install a car alarm for an extra fee. Other cars cannot be turned on except with a special electronic key, so that even if someone makes a copy of the key’s shape, they still can’t turn the car on. They can, however, still break into the car and steal its contents or the spare parts, which are what most thieves are really after anyway.

Despite the various views about the deterrence value of the alarms, the alarm business is doing alarmingly well.

“We have different types of car alarms with a price range that starts at SR1,450,” said an employee at Ziebart, a automotive workshop. “There has been an increase in sales for car alarms during the past year, and most of the clients are those with expensive cars,” he said.

People who cannot afford to install a reliable car alarm often opt for the “Club” (a blocking bar) on the steering wheel. With cars that are popular with thieves such as Toyotas and Nissans because of their spare parts and radios, neither the alarm nor the Club always deters the thieves. That is when some motorists turn to a higher authority.

“I depend on prayer to protect my car,” Mahmoud said. “My car radio has been stolen three times from my Camry during the past two years, and the police are ineffective at protecting cars or finding the thieves.”

The best tips most experts give to decrease the chances of car theft is not to leave any valuables visible in the car, such as cell phones, wallets or money, and never leave the key in the car or the car unlocked — even for a few seconds.