Jamestown is celebrating its 125th birthday this year. There are a wide variety of activities. They seem to be very well attended and its nice to see the strong sense of community this has highlighted. Yesterday there was a parade, probably the biggest in Jamestown history. It seemed like the whole city (of 15,000) showed up on a sunny morning of sitting with friends.
During the parade, a car alarm went off someplace nearby. Not a single person of the thousands present even turned their head in response. A short time later, a second alarm went off. Again, not the slightest response. Eventually, both alarms stopped, as they always do. I assume it was a false alarm, although there is the remote possibility of a major crime spree.
Has anyone ever responded to a car alarm as if there was a theft? Has any thief ever been deterred by such an alarm? I wonder what the ratio is of false alarms to real alarms? I'm sure is is in the range of thousands to one.
In medicine, if there was a test that gave 999 false positives for each true positive, no one would even think of using it. Why do manufactures continue to torture us with these alarms, whose only function is to cause embarrassment for the owners?
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