Keys locked inside!

My keys sit in the cupholder when I get home. My car is safely parked inside my garage when we are home.

Got home yesterday from a trip to the grocery store. I unloaded the car, made dinner, etc. I went to the garage this morning to load the kids to take them to school. The car is LOCKED! My keys are sitting where I left them, in the cupholder.

I know for a fact I have not touched those keys since I got in the car at the store yesterday afternoon. Load groceries, get in car, drop keys in cup holder, set purse on seat, drive home.

So really I have two questions:
1) Did the car lock itself? I know this sounds stupid. But the windows were closed, no one had been in the garage since I got the single bag of groceries from the trunk and my kid from the back seat.
2) I thought the car would not lock if the keys were inside. This isn't really a question, but it does bring up many, as the keys were inside the car and it was obviously locked.

A quick plug for Nissan roadside assist. They were friendly on the phone, and I had a truck here within 20 minutes to let me into my car. It took all of about 30 seconds to pop the door open.

Anyone else done this? Or am I the first? I'm not a forgetful person and have only once in my life locked myself out of my car!

I figured I would post this for some entertainment as well as puzzle solving fun.

Where was your second key fob that came with the car?

Could you, or anyone, including your child, have accadently touched the button on the door handle?

My second fob was with my husband, heading to a meeting. He was a good 20 miles away.

deonnek said:

My second fob was with my husband, heading to a meeting. He was a good 20 miles away.

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Could you husband have somehow locked the car with his fob before he left?

My Prius won't allow you to lock with a SmartKey in the car. I'd be surprised if Nissan allowed it.

hmm I can't make the Leaf let me lock my keys in it. It just beeps if I try to lock the doors and leave the keys inside.

-Matt

You may have a low battery on your fob or a problem with the chip as it is supposed to be impossible to lock the car with the key inside.

Suggestion : keep the FOB in the purse. No reason to take it out at all.

There is one way to lock the fob inside...press the lock doors button on the armrest, then shut the door. Any chance this happened, even accidentally?

P.S. Leaving the fob in the car just seems like asking for a problem like this, or worse. In your shoes, I'd simply keep it on me...that's what keyless entry is all about, after all.

davewill said:

There is one way to lock the fob inside...press the lock doors button on the armrest, then shut the door. Any chance this happened, even accidentally?

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I'm surprised that's possible. My 06 Prius I'm pretty sure won't allow this, it'll unlock all the doors the moment you close the last open door. I'm pretty sure my mom's 07 NAH won't allow this either. Looking at the 07 NAH manual (on page 3-5), confirms this behavior.

With the Intelligent Key left in the vehicle (not in the Intelligent Key port) and any door open, all doors will unlock automatically and a chime will sound after the door is closed.

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I could only see the above behavior not working if the key fob battery is dead, the key is in some internal antenna dead zone or there's some interference preventing the car communicating w/the key.

cwerdna said:

davewill said:

There is one way to lock the fob inside...press the lock doors button on the armrest, then shut the door. Any chance this happened, even accidentally?

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I'm surprised that's possible. ... I could only see the above behavior not working if the key fob battery is dead, the key is in some internal antenna dead zone or there's some interference preventing the car communicating w/the key.

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Well, I had to go test it, and you're absolutely right. I know my '04 Prius will allow it, but I'm happy to report the the LEAF unlocked all doors and beeped insistently at me (I did the test with a window open, not wanting to actually lock my fob in the car).

davewill said:

cwerdna said:

davewill said:

There is one way to lock the fob inside...press the lock doors button on the armrest, then shut the door. Any chance this happened, even accidentally?

Click to expand...

I'm surprised that's possible. ... I could only see the above behavior not working if the key fob battery is dead, the key is in some internal antenna dead zone or there's some interference preventing the car communicating w/the key.

Click to expand...

Well, I had to go test it, and you're absolutely right. I know my '04 Prius will allow it, but I'm happy to report the the LEAF unlocked all doors and beeped insistently at me (I did the test with a window open, not wanting to actually lock my fob in the car).

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Whenever I try testing the above features, I remove the (emergency) manual key from the fob first.

As for Priues, at least on the 2nd gens (04-09), the lockout prevention I mentioned only should work if your car is equipped with SKS (Smart Key System). 2nd gen Priuses w/o SKS have no black buttons on the two front door handles nor at the hatch and required that you put the key in the slot to start them (w/foot on the brake).

cwerdna said:

As for Priues, at least on the 2nd gens (04-09), the lockout prevention I mentioned only should work if your car is equipped with SKS (Smart Key System). 2nd gen Priuses w/o SKS have no black buttons on the two front door handles nor at the hatch and required that you put the key in the slot to start them (w/foot on the brake).

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When I get home I'll try it on the Prius, although I coulda swore I did it once. It would be nice if it was that smart.

davewill said:

cwerdna said:

As for Priues, at least on the 2nd gens (04-09), the lockout prevention I mentioned only should work if your car is equipped with SKS (Smart Key System). 2nd gen Priuses w/o SKS have no black buttons on the two front door handles nor at the hatch and required that you put the key in the slot to start them (w/foot on the brake).

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When I get home I'll try it on the Prius, although I coulda swore I did it once. It would be nice if it was that smart.

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When I picked up my Prius, my salesman demonstrated part of the anti-lockout feature by throwing BOTH keys into the trunk area, closing it and pushing the black button. I don't recall if he demonstrated the auto-unlock portion if a key is left in the car.

On Priuschat, I know there was a thread discussing certain odd boundary cases where you could possible lock the Prius' key inside. I don't remember the details but might've involved things like moving keys thru an open window, the auto re-lock feature after 30 seconds (if you unlock remotely via fob or SKS and don't open any doors, after 30 (or 60?) seconds, the doors lock themselves), etc.

need to be careful about the demonstrating salesman, we were looking at mini-vans a few years back and the guy is going on and on about how the automatic sliding door has hands-safe safety features and will never close on someone's hand. He tells my wife to put her hand on the door jam and he presses the close button. Well... needless to say that was the first time I was at a dealership where every sales and office person went into hiding trying to avoid us at all costs. A bit of a bruise for my wife's hand but it was fun to see the panic spread through the dealership as they tried to get us to just leave quickly and not sue them.

Was it a Chrysler dealership? A good friend of mine was a head engineer at Chrysler until the mid-90's, and as long as he was there he wouldn't approve those electric sliding doors. His answer whenever a marketing or other Chrysler employee would start pushing it was: "OK, how about you bring your son/daughter in here, and we'll put their head/arm in the door, and test it." The discussion always ended there, as no one was willing to risk their own son or daughter.

only time you would not be allowed to lock the door with keys inside is if BOTH keys are inside. this is actually good. cant tell you how many times we had to dig for keys with SO who is pretty careless about that kind of stuff. will bring keys, purse, wallet, cellphone then immediately lose track of them when she gets in the car.

i can see it being an inconvenience and i have left my keys in the car overnight millions of times. in a closed garage, why not? but i rarely leave the windows rolled up. once in a while in winter i might forget to roll them down when parking but i find the condensation levels to be much lower if the windows are left open a bit so having both front windows down 6" is the norm for me

only time you would not be allowed to lock the door with keys inside is if BOTH keys are inside. this is actually good. cant tell you how many times we had to dig for keys with SO who is pretty careless about that kind of stuff. will bring keys, purse, wallet, cellphone then immediately lose track of them when she gets in the car.

i can see it being an inconvenience and i have left my keys in the car overnight millions of times. in a closed garage, why not? but i rarely leave the windows rolled up. once in a while in winter i might forget to roll them down when parking but i find the condensation levels to be much lower if the windows are left open a bit so having both front windows down 6" is the norm for me

qcar said:

need to be careful about the demonstrating salesman, we were looking at mini-vans a few years back and the guy is going on and on about how the automatic sliding door has hands-safe safety features and will never close on someone's hand. He tells my wife to put her hand on the door jam and he presses the close button. Well... needless to say that was the first time I was at a dealership where every sales and office person went into hiding trying to avoid us at all costs. A bit of a bruise for my wife's hand but it was fun to see the panic spread through the dealership as they tried to get us to just leave quickly and not sue them.

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Haha! I didn't expect the salesman to demo the Prius' SKS the way he did. I was nervous about it too but hey, I was at a dealer. It was his problem if the demo failed.