Although car alarms of some kind have been available since the beginning of the automobile era, the dramatic increase in their installation in the 1980s and 1990s coupled with the fact that nearly all types of car alarms are easily triggered accidentally (frequently because of high sensitivity settings) means that people who hear them often ignore them. In 1994, the New York City Police Department claimed that car alarms may actually be making car theft and break-in crimes more frequent. There is one account in 1992 of a thief in New York City rocking a car to deliberately trigger its alarm in order to help conceal the sound of a breaking window.