by Alex Marshall, Editor, Spotlight on the Region
In game theory, one of the classic situations studied is how to get out of the "Prisoner's Dilemma," where two convicts each pursuing their own self interest end up making things worse for themselves.
Economists have a different way of talking about situations where everyone loses the more they try to maximize their own self interest. They call it "market failure."
Whatever the term, either would apply to the situation we have with car alarms in New York City and other dense, urban communities all around the Tri-state region. Car manufacturers install them, and people buy cars with them, with the idea that having them make them safer. They don't worry too much about bothering other people with the noise from them.
Now fast-forward to New York City or any crowded neighborhood in the Tri-state region. Thousands, perhaps millions, of people's sleep is being disturbed by the intermittent to constant bleating and blaring of car alarms, ninety-nine percent of which are probably false alarms. And even the owners of cars with car alarms, who are also being kept awake at night, probably rue that everyone else has followed a similar path.
We are caught in an uncomfortable nest constructed by our own intent on vigilance.
All this comes to mind for several reasons. One is that The New York Post reported this week that New Yorkers called in 331,090 times to complain about noise, the top reason for calling the 311 number. This is up from 255,000 calls during the first year of 311. Secondly, and even more importantly, the City Council held its first public hearing last week on doing the first major overhaul of the New York City Noise Code in 30 years. So the time is now to lobby for what should be in it. And thirdly, car alarms irritate the hell out of me!
There was a time when I would regard such concern as evidence of misplaced priorities. But that was before I moved to Brooklyn. The bleat and blare of car alarms happens 24 hours a day. It is not uncommon to hear three or four alarms going off at once, harmonizing with each other in a mix of tonalities and volume levels. In my old apartment in Manhattan, car alarms bothered me occasionally. In Brooklyn, they are a constant erosion of my mental well being.
Who will rid me of this nuisance? I'm ready to simply make them illegal. If you own a car in the city, or even bring one into the city, you should not be allowed to have an operative car alarm. If it goes off, you should receive a hefty fine.
Transportation Alternatives, the advocacy group in New York City, has done work on this issue and favors my gut level instincts. Just ban them, it concludes in its report, Alarmingly Useless, (available at www.transalt.org). Besides finding through a professional poll that "New Yorkers uniformly despise car alarms," the authors cite convincing data from insurance companies that show car alarms don't deter crime. The report fleshed out other, saner ways to deter car thieves. Cars can be equipped with personal pagers that alert their owners when disturbed, or GPS trackers. And there are old fashioned remedies like steering wheel locks. Any of them do more to deter theft than car alarms.
Aaron Naparstek, who worked on the report Alarmingly Useless, makes the reasonable suggestion that the state could make sure car alarms are deactivated by them to the list of things to check in the required annual state automotive inspections. This is one way to implement a ban, or some sort of control, Naperstek said in an interview. Naparstek is an interesting case. He got so mad at the cars honking their horns outside his Brooklyn apartment that he started posting small poems expressing his feelings on telephone poles. He assembled these into a book Honku: A Zen Antidote to Road Rage, and became active in fighting noise. You can see some of them at www.honku.org.
So that's where we are left, as we look to the future. Can we escape our prisoner's dilemma and find a quieter, gentler way to both not have our cars stolen and live together in peace? I certainly hope so.
In game theory, one of the classic situations studied is how to get out of the "Prisoner's Dilemma," where two convicts each pursuing their own self interest end up making things worse for themselves.
Economists have a different way of talking about situations where everyone loses the more they try to maximize their own self interest. They call it "market failure."
Whatever the term, either would apply to the situation we have with car alarms in New York City and other dense, urban communities all around the Tri-state region. Car manufacturers install them, and people buy cars with them, with the idea that having them make them safer. They don't worry too much about bothering other people with the noise from them.
Now fast-forward to New York City or any crowded neighborhood in the Tri-state region. Thousands, perhaps millions, of people's sleep is being disturbed by the intermittent to constant bleating and blaring of car alarms, ninety-nine percent of which are probably false alarms. And even the owners of cars with car alarms, who are also being kept awake at night, probably rue that everyone else has followed a similar path.
We are caught in an uncomfortable nest constructed by our own intent on vigilance.
All this comes to mind for several reasons. One is that The New York Post reported this week that New Yorkers called in 331,090 times to complain about noise, the top reason for calling the 311 number. This is up from 255,000 calls during the first year of 311. Secondly, and even more importantly, the City Council held its first public hearing last week on doing the first major overhaul of the New York City Noise Code in 30 years. So the time is now to lobby for what should be in it. And thirdly, car alarms irritate the hell out of me!
There was a time when I would regard such concern as evidence of misplaced priorities. But that was before I moved to Brooklyn. The bleat and blare of car alarms happens 24 hours a day. It is not uncommon to hear three or four alarms going off at once, harmonizing with each other in a mix of tonalities and volume levels. In my old apartment in Manhattan, car alarms bothered me occasionally. In Brooklyn, they are a constant erosion of my mental well being.
Who will rid me of this nuisance? I'm ready to simply make them illegal. If you own a car in the city, or even bring one into the city, you should not be allowed to have an operative car alarm. If it goes off, you should receive a hefty fine.
Transportation Alternatives, the advocacy group in New York City, has done work on this issue and favors my gut level instincts. Just ban them, it concludes in its report, Alarmingly Useless, (available at www.transalt.org). Besides finding through a professional poll that "New Yorkers uniformly despise car alarms," the authors cite convincing data from insurance companies that show car alarms don't deter crime. The report fleshed out other, saner ways to deter car thieves. Cars can be equipped with personal pagers that alert their owners when disturbed, or GPS trackers. And there are old fashioned remedies like steering wheel locks. Any of them do more to deter theft than car alarms.
Aaron Naparstek, who worked on the report Alarmingly Useless, makes the reasonable suggestion that the state could make sure car alarms are deactivated by them to the list of things to check in the required annual state automotive inspections. This is one way to implement a ban, or some sort of control, Naperstek said in an interview. Naparstek is an interesting case. He got so mad at the cars honking their horns outside his Brooklyn apartment that he started posting small poems expressing his feelings on telephone poles. He assembled these into a book Honku: A Zen Antidote to Road Rage, and became active in fighting noise. You can see some of them at www.honku.org.
So that's where we are left, as we look to the future. Can we escape our prisoner's dilemma and find a quieter, gentler way to both not have our cars stolen and live together in peace? I certainly hope so.
@RegionalPlan