Sound familiar?

Victor

Sound familiar (pardon the pun)?

http://home.eircom.net/content/reuters/worldnews/2353220?view=Eircomnet

New Yorker dreams of a city where he can sleep
From:Reuters
Thursday, 15th January, 2004
By Sinead Carew

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Fledgling Manhattan-based composer Aaron Friedman finally decided he'd had enough about a year ago after he was rudely awakened late one night for the umpteenth time by the woeep-bloeep-doeep of a car alarm.

When the native Californian first moved to New York, he accepted the nightly cacophony of alarms as the price he had to pay for living in the city that never sleeps, a place known for its manic activity and bustling night spots.

But then Friedman, 25, realised his distress was caused not by someone stealing cars but by a sensitive alarm on a red Jeep that was set off by the vibrations of passing trucks.

Now the soft-spoken musician has started a campaign that could lead to a ban against loud car alarms in the city, replacing the loud devices with silent alternatives.

"People have learned to disregard alarms entirely because practically every time they go off there's no theft in progress," said Friedman who launched a Web site, http://www.silentmajorityny.org/, to explain his cause.

The site offers a link to his lengthy treatise on the subject entitled "Alarmingly Useless." It also includes wild tales that suggest Friedman is not alone in his frustration.

One story tells of a hammer-wielding priest circling a car after its alarm had sounded for an excruciating 30 minutes while another contributor mentioned a Brooklyn mockingbird whose song sounded suspiciously like a car alarm.

Another person took to leaving menacing notes on a car with a frequently active alarm while another claimed his chronic arthritis was aggravated by sleep deprivation.

POLITICIAN ANGERED TOO

Also tired of being awakened at 3 a.m. to the shrill shriek of auto alarms, City Council member Eva Moskowitz joined the cause after she receiving an enormous number of public complaints.

"New Yorkers have a right to sleep," said the Manhattan-based councillor who hopes the city will pass a law this year banning the sale and use of noisy car alarms. She argues that the devices which frequently succeed in waking up her baby do nothing to deter auto theft.

In fact, New Yorkers moaned about noise more than anything else last year on a city hotline, making 170,000 complaints.

But Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Charles Sturcken said the much lower number of noise-related tickets given out by police last year, about 2,500, suggest that current rules are not being strictly enforced.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed an overhaul of the city's noise code to make offenses easier to identify and punish. Sturcken says current laws defining "unreasonable noise" as an offence are too subjective and would be replaced under Bloomberg's plan to allow police to ticket people making "plainly audible noise from a certain distance."

But councillor Moskowitz and John Liu, a Queens councillor, are fighting for a law focused specifically on auto alarms.

Car theft in the city has fallen in recent years and dropped about 12 percent from 2002 to 23,147 reported cases last year.

As a result, the New York City Police Department is against eliminating car alarms in the belief they deter thefts. Detractors say the police department is unable to provide any statistics to back up the assertion.

SILENT ALTERNATIVES

Friedman and others say owners should instead use silent alternatives like brake locks, ignition immobilises or alarms that alert the car's owner when it is disturbed rather than blaring the news to the entire neighbourhood.

Under current rules, car alarms must be shut down within three minutes. But this too late for some irate New Yorkers.

"All it takes is 30 seconds for babies to be awakened," said Liu who believes the disturbance creates anger rather than an urge to help prevent crime.

Liu wants to phase out noisy car alarms over time by banning the sale and installation of new devices.

Moskowitz, who said her car was stolen even though it had an alarm, wants an immediate ban. She hopes the two can put together a joint proposal in time for a hearing in February.

"When a car alarm goes off I have never seen anybody pay any attention except to curse at the owner of that car," Liu said.