Starter Killer, How Safe it is?

I was with a friend who had a compustar 2wss-as installed in his acura tsx by  a reputable dealer. As we came to the car and he tried to disarm the alarm and it would not disarm. We tried the one way remote and that would not diarm the system as well. The worst part was that there was a starter kill installed as well and now the alarm was sending the ground keeping the starter kill active with no way to disable it. We had to take a cab home and I came back with him and my tools and reconnected the cut starter wire and he took it back to the shop and they replaced the brain.  So this is another instance in which the starter kill spells trouble.

I agree with captainzab and to add most of the better installations should be gone over with both the owner of the car and the installer so that towing is a last resort. Things can fail and if the valet switch does not turn off the system then the fuse should be somewhere that the customer and installer know where it's at. Put the fuse next to other fuses in one of the fuse blocks like under the dash or under the hood and make notes on the receipt as to where a disabling fuse or valet switch might be at. I wouldn't though leave the fuse easily accessible but know where it's at if needed. Now this won't help a whole lot on a used car someone may have bought from somewhere and the new owner is unaware of things but those things happen also.

Out of 25 years of installing I have only had to replace TWO relays and the one was some el-cheapo overseas crap that came from Wolo and JC whitney and the other was that 1/10th of 1% that will be bad or go bad. NEVER have I had a Bosch or Potter/Brumfield relay fail.

There are a bunch of relays on todays cars and while anything can fail it's not that often or hardly at all. NOW if you expect a 30A relay to pass 60A of current for years while underwater then you will be setup for a failure.

Jim