Since my car got stolen a week ago (and almost fully recovered thankfully) I've been thinking a lot about theft and how to prevent it (big thanks to suspendedhatch for his articles). I plan on getting a Viper 5000 and doing a much better installation than my old alarm that was a textbook easy target.

However, I've been thinking of rigging up some pepper spray to go off somewhere inside the car when someone tries to steal it. It would have to be triggered by something other than the alarm itself or the car would be gassing itself all the time on false alarms. I could make something that would detect the battery being disconntected or something like that, that would only happen in the event of theft (provided I remembered to deactivate this device prior to working on the car myself). The great thing is that pepper spray does not need direct contact to mess someone up and the confined area in the car would amplify that. I was thinking of maybe mounting it under the dash and spraying towards the floorboards. My only concern is that I'd never get the smell out of my car. At least spraying it at the floor mats I could replace them if I needed to. Anyone have some insight into this? Will the smell be permanent? What do you think of my idea? Am I just crazy?

One motivation for this idea is that a good alarm system can only prevent a car from being stolen, but will do nothing to prevent the sub-human thieves from jacking all your stereo equipment and such. Pepper spray should prevent people from entering the vehicle for some time. Having to air out my car would be another possible drawback to this idea, but I'd really get a good laugh knowing it went off on somebody.

Lastly as a disclaimer, here in Texas it is against the law to lethally booby trap your property. For instance, if you pumped in VX nerve gas, you'd be charged with manslaughter (and probably a lot more). I'm sure I don't have to say this, but please keep discussion to non-lethal forms of deterrants.

 

You just add it to underneath the driverside's dash.. cause thats where theives mostly go..

wire up a sensor underneath the floor mat to detect pressure... like those DDR pads...

so when the ddr pad is pressed and the alarm is going off.. have a delay so you get em in the eye when they are looking up into the wiring...

 

That's a good idea about the pressure sensor but I think that may cause a false discharge if I happened to be in the car at the time (I have been sitting in my driver's seat when the alarm has gone off before). Ideas like this are what I'm looking for though.

And I forgot to mention I was thinking about putting a delay in, but again to prevent it going off by accident. If I for some reason set off the alarm AND forgot to disable the rest of the device, I could add in about a 5 or 10 second delay for me to hit the kill switch on the pepper spray.

 

nice idea, but don't you think that the next thing you have to worry about is pissing off the theif only for him/her to take out the anger on the car with a bat

 

That's something I haven't considered, but I would think they would be incapcitated for some time before being in complete control of themself again. Ideally that would about be the time I would show up with a gun in one hand and cell phone talking to the cops in the other hand. I will be adding a paging alarm in the very near feature.

 

lol, i have a mockup alarm kill switch that i wired to a horn. pepper spray is a great idea lmao

 

this post reminds me of an old smoke defense machine i had. it hooks to your alarm and once triggered it fills the car with smoke. it works on the exact priciple of a party fog machine. the idea behind the product was " you cant steal what you cant see", they also work good for getting attention at car shows.

 

Just mount a 10000 volt tazer under the dash aimed down and use one of those pressure pads to trigger it.