Locked in the Car and Unable to get Out - Food for Thought

[buckeyefarmer]

Who the hell cranks a car until the battery is dead?

Usually the crank behind the wheel.

 

[Hambone]

Are we ever going to be told the details of the car? Make, model, year?

I don't reckon
On my old 15 F150, it would shut headlight off after a while, even without being on auto.
But, if you switched it over to parking lights it would go plum dead

 

[gstrom99]

Like many of you, I just went out and tried mine. 2019 Jeep Cherokee.

Locked the doors from the inside. No key. Opened just fine with the lever.

Must be more to the story... ?

 

[Cougsfan]

A friend of mine related a different auto door locking story: On an icy and snowy day some lady in a VW Bug (the new ones) turned the corner in front of his house and slipped, jumped the curb and got stuck. She got out of her car to look at the situation and shut her door. Unfortunately she had left the car in gear, The wheels were spinning slowly but the car was hung up on the ice and was not moving. The doors on the car auto locked themselves and she couldn't get back in. She knocked on my friends door for help. They called a locksmith. She was invited in and they enjoyed a cup of coffee or three while waiting for the locksmith. Some time later the locksmith showed up. He unlocked the doors and they put the car in reverse and with a shove were able to get the car back on the road.

 

[Cougsfan]

My wife's 2018 Hyundai Kona only has an electronic door unlock feature while my 2018 Chevy Volt has a manual unlock lever on each door. The Hyundai is continually locking itself up when she doesn't want it to. Make her mad.

I hate the auto locking features on car doors these days. You'd think everyone lives in a crime ridden neighborhood and you have to lock up every thing you own in every single moment. On my pick-up truck, the keys are almost never removed from the ignition or the doors locked for the last 20 years. No one has stolen it yet. Where I live it is more than a little unlikely it will ever get stolen. That is one of the reasons I live where I live. Many of the more modern cars don't have auto lock bypass features anymore.

I also wish they had a fixed storage point for FOBs on new cars. I guess the expect you to never leave the FOB anywhere but in your pocket. That might work OK if you are the only one who drives your car. My Volt is confusing because you can't easily tell if the car is on or off.

 

[Torvy]

Like many of you, I just went out and tried mine. 2019 Jeep Cherokee.

Locked the doors from the inside. No key. Opened just fine with the lever.

Must be more to the story... ?

To be fair, if you want to test the theory, you need to pull your battery cable to simulate a dead battery.

OP, no offense to the lady, we can only hypothesize with what we know.

 

[KennyG]

My wife's 2018 Hyundai Kona only has an electronic door unlock feature while my 2018 Chevy Volt has a manual unlock lever on each door. The Hyundai is continually locking itself up when she doesn't want it to. Make her mad.

I hate the auto locking features on car doors these days. You'd think everyone lives in a crime ridden neighborhood and you have to lock up every thing you own in every single moment. On my pick-up truck, the keys are almost never removed from the ignition or the doors locked for the last 20 years. No one has stolen it yet. Where I live it is more than a little unlikely it will ever get stolen. That is one of the reasons I live where I live. Many of the more modern cars don't have auto lock bypass features anymore.

I also wish they had a fixed storage point for FOBs on new cars. I guess the expect you to never leave the FOB anywhere but in your pocket. That might work OK if you are the only one who drives your car. My Volt is confusing because you can't easily tell if the car is on or off.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people live in places where you can't leave anything unlocked. I know someone who lives in the middle of nowhere and had an anvil stolen from an unlocked shed. Nothing else, just the anvil. I once had bricks stolen that were piled by the garage I was building. Where do you go to fence bricks?

I think the autolock is actually a crash safety feature. If I remember correctly, the doors are less likely to open in a crash if they are locked so they have to automatically lock at a certain speed.

 

[MossRoad]

In all of our Chevy's since 2000 you can disable the auto lock feature, make it autolock when put in drive, unlock when put in park, only driver's door unlock when put in park, etc..

It's all done through the radio, or dashboard controls. Is that not available anymore?

 

[Molalla1]

I'll just keep my 06 ram 1 ton, and a few others a little older .

 

[ljjhouser]

Kinda feel like a good battery would recover enough to operate locks if she could relax and wait for 15 minutes. Maybe not. I am glad she could call for help.