Almost nothing peeves me more than a rude car alarm. This morning, I heard one go off in my townhouse complex. I ran to the street to see which of my evil neighbors was the offender. I discovered the noise didn't come from the street at all, and yet it continued.

Imagine my surprise when I tracked down the doer-of-bad-deeds and it was my own nine-month-old Camry! In car-years, with 14K miles, it must be a teenager by now. Sheesh.

My Camry was sitting in the garage, and there was no intruder present (yes, I checked). There were no planes flying overhead. No electronic signals nearby.

The car alarm had set itself off with no apparent cause. Has anyone else had this happen? Do I need to exorcise my possessed Camry?

 

haha. Don't you love when that happens? My TCH alarm also went off one time in my driveway with no apparent cause. No large trucks went by, nobody went near the car, no big winds to cause vibration, etc. It's never happened again... at least not while I've been in hearing range.

I think this happened to at least one other person, because I remember reading how he wished that whoever the friggin a-hole outside was would shutoff his dang alarm. After 10 minutes he had enough and went outside and realized who the a-hole was.

 

Nope can't say I heard of that...However I do have my odd alarm stories. I had a viper alarm on my very first NEW car. While driving down the freeway my alarm decides to start going off. I WAS DRIVING AND THE ALARM WENT OFF. I had to pull over to the side of the freeway and shut the car off in order to turn the alarm off. Very strange. That was the only time it happened to me...well I also didn't own the car much longer after that happened LOL

I have a factory installed alarm in my Civic and my alarm will sporadically activate itself (not go off but activate) when I unlock the car from the inside. When I get out and shut the door that alarm will start going off...

 

Maybe a car is more like a relationship than we had imagined... and car alarms were invented to remind us who's the boss.

 

Maybe an exterminator to get rid of the rodents chewing on the wires?
Seriously, the alarm doesn't shut off after 'x' minutes ??

 

It happened to me too.

One afternoon last week, while my TCH was parked in the garage, a car alarm disturbed our peaceful neighborhood. At first I ignored the noise (don't most people ignore car alarms???), but after a few minutes, my curiosity was aroused. Nosy me decided to see which of my neighbors was responsible for the racket. When I opened the the garage door to check outside, I was surprised to find the culprit was my TCH.

I have no idea what caused the alarm. I had left the car in the garage - unlocked. The alarm wasn't even set. I reset the alarm using the button on the fob and it hasn't reoccurred.

 

I used to have this problem with my Accord. As it turns out, there was a good reason for it. My key ring was arranged in such a way that the edge of my apartment key was in exactly the right spot to hit the panic button, and tended to make contact in my pocket. It took a while to figure out but there were no more false alarms after I re-arranged the keys.

 

The Lojack remote for my previous car would cause the car to chirp just by sitting down from the tension of my pants against the remote. The TCH remote has recessed buttons that require much more force to actuate. PLUS the emergency button requires you to HOLD it for several seconds to actuate. Hard to do by accident even with a key ring arrangement as you describe.

 

This has happened to me twice. Last October, parked at a Denver restaurant, the alarm on the Maxcima went off and couldn't be reset for more than a minute before sounding off again. After almost ten minutes we found the culprit, the key fob in my wife's purse pressing against the keys. Last week the TCH did the same thing when I sat down in the living room. The fob in my pocket?, same thing. Go figure!

 

The same thing happened to me on Sunday - for no apparent reason.