"Mr Macaw" wrote in message news
On Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:17:48 -0000, 879 wrote:



"Mr Macaw" wrote in message
news
On Fri, 08 Jan 2016 22:37:53 -0000, 879 wrote:



"Mr Macaw" wrote in message
news On Fri, 08 Jan 2016 17:25:56 -0000, 879 wrote:



"Mr Macaw" wrote in message
news On Sat, 02 Jan 2016 12:47:11 -0000, NY wrote:

"MM" wrote in message
...
An Amazon Logistics delivery van came earlier to deliver a parcel.
I
noticed that the van was still parked outside, blocking my drive,
30
minutes later. I asked the driver what was the problem, and he
said
he'd locked his keys in the back of the van. Amazon sent an
emergency
locksmith, who arrived 10 minutes ago. I'm rather surprised that
he
hasn't got it open yet!

I don't need to go anywhere in a hurry, but as a matter of
interest,
is it THAT difficult to open a van nowadays?

The locksmith is working on the side door, not the rear. (Not the
passenger door, the side door to the storage area.)

I'm surprised that car/van locks are still made in such a way that
it
is
possible to lock the door with the keys inside. If the front doors
are
still
open, you'd think there would be an electronic override switch that
would
open the rear door.

As time progresses, vehicles have stupider and stupider electronic
systems,

No.

like locking the door ITSELF after a certain time if you leave the
vehicle
unattended. Of course the vehicle doesn't know the keys are in the
vehicle and not your pocket.

It does actually.

Even if it's supposed to sense them somehow,

In the same way it knows its in the car when you hit the engine start
button.

like mobile phones, signals aren't always 100%.

Perfectly possible to have it fail safe.

Except I've seen plenty that don't. If the sensor isn't sensitive
enough,
it doesn't know the difference between no keys and can't quite see the
keys.

It does, because if it can't quite see the keys it will see them
intermittently.

It wont if the keys are with the owner who has walked away from that
car.

My Honda CRV thought they were not in the car.

You can get faults with any device and bad design too.

Not all cars that lock themselves if you forget are bad designs.

I see bad design everywhere in all makes of car.

I've never locked my keys inside any vehicle because I *always*
keep
them
in
my pocket apart from when I'm using them to open a door (assuming
the
remote
has failed) or to operate the ignition switch; and in the latter
case
I
always remove them as I am getting out of the car. I got into the
habit
of
never putting the keys down anywhere (especially inside the car)
even
for
a
few seconds. Likewise if I shut a house door that has a Yale lock,
I
always
check that I have my keys in my pocket/hand before slamming the
door.
It's
an ingrained habit, just like giving the gear lever a waggle to
confirm
it's
in neutral before letting the clutch up at the end of a journey or
before
starting the engine (though in our new car I can't stat the engine
unless
the clutch is down).

You must be the 1% of the population with a perfectly working memory
and
never gets distracted.

That is the whole point of getting into that sort of habit,
it keeps working in that situation.

Habits only work for good memory.

Wrong.

Uhhhh you require a memory to use a habit.

But not a GOOD memory, an average memory is fine.

Most people don't even have that.

By definition they do, that's what average means.

I can't even remember to clean my teeth or shave every day.

That's because of your Alzheimer's. Most don't have that problem.

Most people forget these things occasionally.

Sure, but most don't forget to shave etc.

Occasionally they do.

That's why keys locked in car/house is a common problem.

That's mostly poor design which allows you
to lock the car/house without using the key.

You wouldn't need good design if we had proper memories.

Very few have that reliable enough memories, particularly
when you include unusual events like wondering whether
the house is burning down and getting out and discovering
that its just a quirk and the house is fine etc.

You can do that with my car, you are free to lock it with
the button on the key with the door(s) open and it will
lock when you close the door, but that clearly risks you
leaving the keys in the car so I am careful to never do
that with the keys not in my hand/pocket. Not that it
would be the end of the world if I did lock the keys
in the car because there is a spare set in the house
and the worst I might have to do is get a lift back
to the house or a taxi and get the spare key. I obviously
don't lock the car like that when way from my town
on a trip etc.

Have you never unlocked a door and been carrying something
large/heavy
and
had to put the keys down somewhere, then forget them?

No, never, because I don't have to put the keys down somewhere
in that situation. I can leave them in the lock until I put the
large/heavy
thing down and then take them out of the lock and do what I normally
do with them.

Which is why I often see people's keys in their front door.

No, that is because that is the only way to enable
anyone to get thru the door with badly designed locks.

Huh? You think they leave them in there all night on purpose?

They don't normally leave them in the lock
all night, but often do for part of the day.

But it's not required to get through the door like you said.

It is with plenty of doors.

They put them in to unlock the door, then forget to remove them as they
carry the shopping in.

Never seen anyone do that. And I don't myself,
the car is parked just outside the house door I
use for that so I unlock the house door, open
the car back door, it's a hatch, press the lock
button on the key, put the keys back in my
pocket, move the shopping into the house,

I don't plan that far in advance.

Its not planning, just a habit that is handy.

I take the shopping out of the car (which is already unlocked as I was
driving it), carry it to the front door, put it down and unlock the door
with the key (this is before I got electronic locks), the key might go in
my pocket, it might get lost in a box of shopping, it might be still in
the lock or dropped on the step.

I am never that careless with something like the keys or the phone.

Same inside the house too, the keys are either in my pocket
or in the same place every time. Same with the phone.

Carry the stuff in, go back for more boxes, shut the car and lock it when
I've taken the last box out, then spend half an hour trying to find the
****ing house keys.

And that is why I do it the other way.

shut the back door on the car and have it
lock automatically, walk into the house and
leave that door unlocked because that is the
door the visitors show up at and I sit facing
that door much of the day, 8' away from it.
I don't normally go to the door when a
visitor shows up, just wave them in if its
someone I know.

I only lock that door from the inside using
the latch at night or when taking a nap.

I never lock my house doors (well they do now as they're electronic), but
I never saw the point in keeping people out when I;m in.

I do now that I was lying on the bed reading a book
during the day and heard the flyscreen being slid
open and heard someone trying to open the big
patio door that is the main entrance door.

Walked out and found a couple of kids
trying to get into the house that way.

Bailed up, unusually they didn't just run off,
tried to tell me some bull**** story about
what they were up to, checking that the
door was properly closed or something.

Called the cops, had the sergeant who is
also the police prosecutor who had charged
the one I caught inside the house come
tearing around the side of the house with
his long baton in his hand. He's built like
a brick **** house. The two girls damned
near shat themselves on the spot.

Locks are for when I'm not here.

Wrong.

I pretty soon stopped using the Yale lock on my house and hid spare
keys in the garden aswell.

With mine I have to use the key to lock the door as I go out.
It isnt possible to slam the door and have it lock without
using the key, so not possible to lock the keys in the house.

A more sensible lock. Mind you, I changed mine to electronic, the key
fob
is round my wrist, so I can't lose it or forget it.

Even better to have the phone do that

You can get a phone to transmit a code to a door lock?

Yep, the best electronic locks work like that and you
can authorise anyone's phone to lock and unlock the
lock and have restrictions on when they can do that,
like say get in today but not any other day, get in for
an hour, or get in between 4pm and 5pm etc, any day
between 9am and 11am etc, anything you like.

But they have to have the right phone

Nope, any phone works fine.

with the right app.

Nope.

I can give my fobs to anybody

With that system you don't need to give anything
to anyone, no need to go anywhere near them,
you can do it all with a call or text and don't need
them to do anything with it when they don't need
to get into your house anymore and you can see if
they try to get in after they are not allowed to anymore.

- the OAPs next door without a mobile at all for example.

You are free to hand them a spare phone in that situation.

And you can do it the other way too, have them
effectively tell you electronically that they are at
the door and have you unlock it remotely too
and even watch them on your surveillance cameras
so you can be sure that the cleaner isnt looting
the place and the person fixing the dishwasher
isnt loading all your stuff into a ****ing great van.

The cleaner? Snob!

Don't use one myself, but plenty do. Don't get anyone
to do the lawns either except with the local council
that does mow one of mine with their ****ing great
tractor mower that is a lot bigger than my car in
exchange for me doing the watering in the
park/walkway next to the house.

Don't get anyone to come and fix anything either,
do that myself. But I do get people to check on the
dog that feeds himself and to check on the house
while I am away for more than a day or so and
need to allow all my neighbours to get into the
house in case there is some obvious problem in
the house that I can detect remotely and need
someone to do something about. I know almost
all the neighbours very well indeed and its very
handy for any of them to be able to do that.

The last time I ended up in hospital for a couple of
weeks, two of the neighbours happened to be out
of town too, and its very handy to be able to fall
back to thru them all to the ones still available
without having to hand them anything physical
or for them to need to remember where they have
put it years after I have given it to them. Even if they
have changed their phone or phone number etc,
its trivially easy to allow them access as required.

That time I ended up in hospital, I had left the sprinklers
on in the park when I drove myself to the hospital. I rang
one of them to get them to turn the sprinklers off when
they wouldn't let me leave the hospital. He later picked
up my car and took it home and got some stuff from the
house that I needed. But his wife managed to forget to
lock the front door when they left.

Fortunately one of the kids I know well came to visit,
discovered that the door was open, couldn't find me,
and had enough sense to go to one of my other neighbours
he knew and tell him that something was wrong.

The original neighbours had gone out of town
and assumed that I'd be carted off to the state
capital quickly. Turned out that took 2 weeks.

And the other next door neighbours whose house
I always check on when their alarm goes off and who
always tell me when they are going to be away were
also out of town then.

and to not allow you
to leave without the phone, so you can't forget to take the
phone with you when you leave either.

I don't always want my phone with me.

Sure, but plenty do take it with then whenever they go out.

Not if I'm going somewhere I might bash it, lose it, or get it soaked.

Sure, but the best designed systems handle that fine too.

How?

You just leave the phone somewhere
where you can get it when you return
or allow an alternate entry via a keypad
PIN etc only in that situation where you
choose to leave the phone behind.

And can allow
anyone you like to unlock the door with any time limits
on that you like with their own phone so you can say
let the person who feeds the pets while you are away
or the cleaner or a service person let themselves in
and the system notifies you when that happens and
when they leave etc too.

I've got 20 fobs.

Much better for any phone that's been authorised to work.

I can program any of them to allow entry to the house, the garage, both,
or none. So I can hand them to people who need to feed animals and
adjust
the code in the door lock according to how much I trust them, and can
change that without having to tell them or get their fob.

Sure, but again, its better if any phone can do it and
you can specify in very fine detail what each phone is
allowed to do and to notify you when they do anything
etc so you can watch them on the surveillance cameras
if you don't know they can be trusted etc. And even
when you do, just knowing you can be watching
any time you like when you have been told that
they have arrived stops all but the worst criminals
even just snooping.

I can also unlock and open the door while my hands are full. I just
hold
my wrist near the door, then push the door open with my foot.

Much better if it unlocks whenever
you are within a few feet of the door.

More expensive to get those.

Not with the ones that work with any phone
essentially because none of that hardware
needs to be supplied. The lock just needs
to be able to communicate with phones
and that costs peanuts now with stuff like
blue tooth and wifi and NFC.

I wonder if you can get a bluetooth lock which doesn't need a phone?

Yes you can.

The one time I ever lost the keys was when I had just moved
into the house I had just built, well before it was even close
to being finished. I had rigged up a temporary bed by putting
an old door on a few concrete blocks in the second bathroom
which had had no work done on it at all. That had a number
of big earthenware pipes coming up thru the concrete slab
for stuff like the floor drain, the shower drain, the sink etc
which were completely open at the top.

I used to take a nap on that most days and managed to
have the keys fall out of my pocket, into one of those
drains without me noticing. After a lot of head scratching
I decided that that must have been what had happened
to the keys and sure enough, when I looked in the drain,
there they were.

I have also never run out of petrol in any car I have ever
driven except on the one occasion when I has picked up
a couple of Alsatian puppies from the state capital which
is more than one fill of petrol away from where I live.
I brought them home in the VW Beetle with the front
seat removed with the two puppies who where only
5 weeks old on some newspaper where the front
passenger's seat normally is. I did manage to forget
to fill up with petrol as I passed the place I usually
filled it on that run I did plenty of times.

Unless you have very far apart petrol stations,

We do.

Then you should surely have larger fuel tanks.

Don't need them, just need to use the petrol stations
that are open then instead of driving past them. You
only need the one with any of the 3 closest state
capitals and the federal capital.

But I don't have to fill every time I pass one,

I don't do anything like that, just remember
that I do have to fill somewhere on the trip.

I'd forget now and then.

The only time I did that was when I was distracted by the puppys.

Whenever I notice the gauge at 1./4 or less, I stop at some point later
on.

I let it get rather lower than that and normally fill up on the Friday
when its low because the garage/yard sale run on the Saturday
starts before any of the petrol stations in town are open.

You can't drive more than 25 miles without a fuel station in the UK.

There is just one open in the middle of the night
anywhere along the middle part of that 500KM route.

I don't see the problem. I just fill up whenever I see the gauge at
1/4
or less.

Doesn't work here at night on long distance trips
down that road.

Or the other roads to the other capitals either.

I'd get a 2nd fuel tank fitted.

Makes more sense to just ensure that you do fill where you have to.

Trivially easy now that any decent smartphone will pop up a reminder
as you pass a specific relocation. Just put that petrol station in that.

That's one area where google maps still could be done much better.
You should be able to tell it the range of your car and when you fill
and when its routing you on a trip, have it tell you where you need
to fill or at least offer where you need to fill.

Particularly with our freeways like the run up the Hume Highway
to Sydney now. That doesn't go thru any major towns anymore
so almost all the 24/7 petrol stations/truck stops are now well
off the freeway so you need to be told that if you want to use
one the exit will be coming up in xKM etc.

It's reassuring that the locksmith is taking so long to get inside,
because
if an expert is having this much difficulty, so will the local
scrote
car/van thieves.

I once had the alarm break on a Ford Mondeo (M reg). It wouldn't
stop
sounding, even though I had the key in my possession and could get
into
the car. I called the AA. He reached under the dashboard below the
steering wheel and snipped the RED (!) wire. Alarm shut up, car
worked
normally.

A car that I borrowed from my local garage when my car was in for
servicing
had a key that had no blade and so there was no way of getting into
the
car
if the remote key or the car battery failed. Seemed a bit of a
fundamental
flaw.

Talking of batteries, why can't they make a bonnet with a normal
lock
like
the boot?

Presumably the lock ends up filled with dead insects
and dirt etc. Much easier to avoid that at the back.

I'm sure it could be under something, like the boot lock of a VW
Beetle
(new type) under the badge which rotates.

More convenient to be able to unlock it
from inside the car in some situations.

Yes, a decent modern electronic lock would fix that.

Doesn't have to be modern.

It is convenient if its part of the central
locking rather than unique to the bonnet.

Best to have the bonnet stay locked when you're driving,

Yeah, presumably that's why it generally isnt integrated with
the central locking. I thought there must be a reason like that.

less chance of it flying up and smashing the windscreen like mine did
after I'd had a shunt earlier and ****ed the catch.

The secondary release system does eliminate
any risk of that except after its been damaged.

There have been electric solenoid operated boot releases for decades.

But fully integrated central locking is relatively modern.

Rubbish. My dad had it on his 2nd hand car 25 years ago. So 30-35 years.

That's relatively modern, after they were all done with just a physical key.

One of them for the bonnet would be good. No need for external lock to
get gunked up.

Yeah, that's what I meant.

The cable release always ends up breaking.

I've only ever had the one break, on a Golf.

Same here, on a Golf. And a Maestro, a Sierra, and an Espace. They
all
use the same cable. When the catch gets a bit stiff and rusty, and
the
cable too, it snaps.

Never happened on any of mine except the Golf.

I thought you drove just as old cars as me?

That varys. I have bought them new since the 60s,
just used the Golf for much longer than most do,
40+ years. The current Getz is getting on for 10
years old now and if it lasts as long as the Golf
did may well be my last car unless some fool
writes it off crashing into it. I only stopped
using the Golf because I was too stupid

[titter]

to fix the known windscreen leak

I never had a windscreen leak on the Golf.

That was after a windscreen replacement.

Just had one on the Getz and it doesn't leak.

I did have a sunroof leak, I just taped that up as I never used it much.

until it eventually
rusted the floor and made it unregisterable
and I couldn't be arsed to cut the rusty patch
out and weld in a new bit.

Haven't had to replace anything in the Getz
except the battery which had an odd fault when
getting close to the end of its life anyway. Mate
of mine is still using the battery on his solar system.

And I never bothered to replace it, had the catch
end coming out the grill and just pulled on that
with the bent over end and the key ring in that
bend when I needed to open the bonnet. With
the wire pushed back into the grill with the bent
end stopping it going back inside completely.

I did that too, and THREE seperate policemen told me to get it fixed, I
ignored them.

Never had anyone complain about it and we have
a pretty stringent check of the car before registration
renewal every year.

It never failed our annual check, just stupid pigs saying "that's sharp".

Mine isnt because of the bent end.

They didn't like me pointing out that a pedestrian won't give a **** about
a little scratch when they've just been flattened and broken their leg.
One also tried to tell me my loose reg plate could come off and fly into
someone's face, and quoted a film where it happened. I said "this is real
life, not the movies", which made him very angry.

Never had a cop complain about anything
except a tire than needed replacing.

Never had one go over the car with a fine
tooth comb trying to shaft me either tho.

Nothing sharp sicking out the
front, because of the bent over end there is just
a 12mm radius bend at the front of the car.

Yeah I didn't do mine so neatly.

They all saw it too because you have to open
the bonnet so they can check under it for some
stuff like how well secured the battery is, altho
none of them have ever checked that on the
Getz that I have ever noticed. I don't always
see what they check tho.

What's with checking the battery? So what if it comes off?

Can cause a fire under bonnet.