New Britain, CT Noise from Specific Sources: Car Alarm Limits (2026)

New Britain has no separate car-alarm ordinance; the rule lives inside Sec. 16-106, the "Exceptions" section of the noise article in Article V of Chapter 16. Subsection (b)(8) exempts "noise created by fire or intrusion alarm" from the article's general decibel standards in Sec. 16-105, but only up to a time cap: the alarm may sound "for a period of time not exceeding ten (10) minutes when such alarm is attached to a vehicle or thirty (30) minutes when attached to any building or structure." A car alarm that keeps blaring past ten minutes therefore loses its exemption and becomes an ordinary violation of the article's noise standards, exposing whoever is responsible for the vehicle to the penalties in Sec.

16-108. Those penalties, fifty dollars per violation and ninety-nine dollars for each day a violation continues after a correction order, apply generally to Article V, and Sec. 16-107 separately governs other motor-vehicle noise, including sound levels tied to the state's own vehicle-noise regulations under G.S. § 14-80a and sound-amplifying devices. Because Sec. 16-106 addresses the alarm itself rather than the vehicle's engine or stereo, an alarm that will not silence after ten minutes is the specific target: someone, typically the vehicle's owner or the alarm-monitoring company, must be able to silence it within that window to stay within the exemption.