A toddler gets locked inside a car with the key inside. Frantic onlookers try to indicate to him by gestures what he should do to unlock the door, so that they did not have to do something extreme like breaking a window which might have hurt the child with the shattered glass.
I know that it used to be the case that police and car mechanics carried with them a thin metal strip that they could insert down the door window and pull a lever to release the lock. But it may be that newer cars with their better security systems have closed that option. Even two decades ago, I was with a friend who had locked her car with the key inside. The police and the mechanics who were called could not get it unlocked using the metal strip because they said it was a Mercedes and thus had a more secure system. Like most things, such features have likely migrated down to the lower end of cars.
I always carry a spare key. Car owners are given three keys, two regular and one valet key. I always keep one car key by itself on a separate ring that is the one I use and a duplicate on a different ring with my other keys, so I always have a spare. I started doing this after a friend of mine was robbed in a parking lot by someone who demanded his car keys. Since it was on the same ring as all his other keys, he lost the lot and as a result had to change his house locks as well, which was a real pain. Now if I should get mugged by someone who wants my car, I will lose only that.
I started carrying an extra car key when I began traveling with my cat, so I could leave the air-conditioning on with the car locked at rest-stops.
My rule. One key on a key ring. One key in a secret pocket in my bag, with a spare house key as well. One key safely at home, just in case. If the worst comes to the worst, I can always take a cab or a bus home to pick up the home key. (And get two copies made asap.)
Yikes, starskeptic. If you have to leave the engine running to run the AC for your cat in the locked car, that sounds … risky … for one thing.
EigenSprocketUK@3
The alternative being…?
I have a wallet that has two small pockets made specifically to hold a key each, one car key and one house key. It was, IMHO, an excellent idea.
I can’t direct you, starskeptic. That’s between you and, depending on which has the most influence on you, your cat or your insurance company or your sense of social responsibility.
No idea what any of that means, EigenSprocketUK -- or what it has to do with ‘social responsibility’…
A year or two ago there was a family from Vancouver on vacation in Victoria who lost the one and only electronic key to their Toyota van. The only way to get a new key was to take the vehicle to a dealership to have specialized computer equipment decrypt and re-encode the locks. However, their van had been bought in Japan and Canadians dealerships weren’t able to decode the locks, so the only option would be to physically ship the van back across the Pacific Ocean to have a new key made for it in Japan.
Fortunately for the family, after their story hit the news a hacker offered his help and their were able to rescue their van a week later.
I follow similar practice with money, keeping my bills in a money clip separate from my ID wallet. I started doing this back when I drove a taxi so that if I was ever robbed (fortunately never happened) I wouldn’t also miss several days work while I went through the hassle of getting my driver’s license replaced. With the multitude of other ID and banks cards I carry these days, it still makes sense to keep them separate to avoid a lot of potential headaches.