Every single time I've seen a car alarm go off, it's been with the owner, or it was a false alarm and the owner was too damn far away for anything to be done about it.

I've experienced the shock of having my rental car burgled outside Marseille en route to Aubagne in less than 5 minutes, as I stepped in and out of a store, and this was a new Citroen with a fancy proximity based "secure" lock - the alarm system was far worse than useless thanks to the false sense of security.

There's a lot of research happening into defeating wireless locking systems, and the security systems even on the high end BMWs are abysmal.

I'd much rather simply lock it physically using my key and shut off the alarms.

In my experience, car alarms are an annoyance rather than any kind of security benefit. I've never seen one go off in an attempt to prevent a theft, or alert anyone to a situation. Usually they're going off because someone hit the panic button on the car fob.

Come to think of it, I don't even think my car (A 2015 MINI cooper) even has a normal car alarm installed. It definitely doesn't have a panic button on it.

Yeah they are..And irratateing...Even mocking birds here imitate them!

It's still there because of the prisoners dilemma. No company wants to be the first to remove the car alarm.