The Alarm
A couple of weeks ago I had one of the worst night's sleep I have ever had. I was staying at my girlfriend's house which has a parking bay immediately outside and just before 1am, as I was just entering a nice sleep, a car alarm started to go off.
I am not a very deep sleeper and get woken up quite regularly by random noises, people talking as they come down the street etc, but because the majority of these noises are one off, or only last a minute or so, I don't really have any problem closing my eyes and going back to sleep again. This situation was a little different!
By the end of hour one I had managed to dose off again a couple of times only to be woken up again either by other noises, or strange short dreams involving alarms that kind of panicked me into waking up. The main problem was that every time I woke up I would get wound up about the alarm being on and then it would take me ages to get back to sleep again.
By 4am I was getting pissed off and got up to close the window. This made the noise quieter, but unfortunately also made it seem a little more high pitched which was slightly more annoying. It also meant that it got really fucking hot, really quickly, as the weather was pretty warm.
By 7am the battery on the car pretty much died and it could no longer manage to keep up a real alarm sound. Instead it just gave out a kind of mid range hum for the next hour or so and then eventually died completely just in time for us to have to get up.
I have a few questions / things to say about this whole situation
1) I bet if I had got out of bed at 4am, fuelled by rage, gone into the street and carved "tosser" into the bonnet of the offending vehicle the owner would have appeared and caved my head in.
Have that! Let this be a lesson to you!
2) Where do I stand legally? Could I call the council and have someone come out and tow the car away?
3) If I started working out loads and got myself to around the physique of Arnie in Twins, would I be able to lift up a car and stop the alarm going off? Does this actually work?
Who says people involved in politics eat too many free lunches?
4) Why do people have alarms on their cars if they are going to just ignore them? Surely you have an alarm on your car to inform you that something may be going off, not so they can roll over and ignore them.
Tags Arnie, Twins, Alarms, Vandalism, Sleep
5 comments:
Haha, I guess that was a horrible night - but the post is just too funny... :-)
Ok, firstly in the acoustics world it is well understood that short term events are more disruptive to sleep as such most sources of noise have a more restrictive max noise level compared to their constant noise level.
Secondly, you have to be aware that the car alarm is designed to attract attention.
Thirdly, the reason the tone changed when you closed the window was because the resonant frequency of teh window pane was met which actually accentuates the passage of sound waves thus for that specific frequency making it seem louder in the room.
Fourthly, if you called the council 24 hr line then they will have a noise team that could have done 2 things... if they had a night noise team then they could have come round and if they have the same powers as we do at work actually had the car towed within 2 hours of the alarm sounding. However, if they only had a day shift they could have served a section 80 nuisance notice on the owner which would mean if their car sounded through the night they could be taken to court or fined.
Fifth, lifting the car would not have an effect on the alaram as cars parked on hills still can have alarms sounding.
when you closed the window was because the resonant frequency of teh window pane was met which actually accentuates the passage of sound waves thus for that specific frequency making it seem louder in the room.
nerd!
Please beef yourself up like Arnie - I reckon I'd piss myself laughing! Bradfields the Body Builder!
nerd!
I prefer to call it educated.
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