Palm Desert, CA Noise from Specific Sources: Car Alarm Limits (2026)

Car alarms are named directly in Palm Desert's noise chapter. Section 9.24.050 lists activities that the City Council deems disturbing, excessive or offensive noises, and says any of them constitutes prima facie evidence of a violation. Subsection A covers horns, signaling devices, muffler systems and car alarms, and bars the unnecessary use or operation of horns, signaling devices, uncontrolled muffler noises and car alarms on vehicles of all types, including motorcycles, and other equipment. The word that matters is unnecessary: a horn used to avoid a collision is not caught, while an alarm that keeps sounding is the kind of noise the subsection targets. Chapter 9.24 prints no minute count or decibel figure for alarms, so enforcement turns on whether the use or operation was unnecessary.

The same subsection pairs that sentence with a fifty-foot test for sound devices operated in a vehicle, which is covered on the vehicle noise page. Section 9.24.040 adds a general bar on loud, excessive, impulsive or intrusive sound that annoys or disturbs persons of ordinary sensibilities at a distance of greater than fifty feet from the property line, and the factors it lists include the time of day and night the noise occurs, its duration, and whether it is constant, recurrent or intermittent. Those factors fit a repeating alarm.

Enforcement belongs to peace officers, as defined in the California Penal Code, and to the city manager or designees authorized to enforce the chapter. Section 9.24.060 exempts mechanical devices connected with emergency machinery, vehicles or work, so an emergency vehicle's signals are outside the rule.