I had a 2003 VW beetle cabriolet that could also be deadlocked from outside. The dealer reasoning was that it would prevent people from reaching in and opening the doors when the roof was down. Not sure what was going to stop people from just climbing in though!
I’m quite sure there was another instance of this with a quite old child a few years ago. Can’t find details any more, but it involved a boy of around 10, the family were on holiday somewhere warm, and they’d driven back to their hotel late at night. The kid was asleep when they got back, so they left him asleep, thinking he’d come inside when he woke up. When he did wake up, he couldn’t get out, the car was right in the path of the rising sun, and he was dead of heat stroke before the parents woke up around midday. Horrific story. The car was a rental - they had no notion they were locking him in fatally when they left the car.
Those type of locks are common in Europe. My wife’s 2009 Skoda does this by default from the remote key fob, not just by physically turning the key in the lock. And it is terrifyingly easy to trap kids inside.
I remember just after we got the car, I got out, leaving my 12 year old son in the car, and clicked the lock shut as normal. I remembered straight away that he was in the car, and clicked it unlocked again. But after 30 seconds, when nobody opened the door, the car deadlocked itself again, in the mistaken assumption that it had been unlocked by accident. Luckily I was close by and able to unlock and open the door.
Remember, this is not a special feature you have to activate with a particular procedure, this is the default behaviour of the locking mechanism. It was the same with my previous 2005 BMW, but not my current Volvo thankfully.
ETA: We now keep one of those little pocket window breakers in the driver’s door pocket.
My 2007 Ford Escape, at least in the back, if the doors are locked, they will not open from the inside. My kids have locked themselves in a few times and I know the child locks are turned off. I haven’t tried the front doors, and I forgot to last night.
That said, they do not need a key to unlock them, just have to unlock the door to open it. I’ve never owned a car where pulling on the handle doesn’t open the door even if it’s locked.
[quote=“md2000, post:20, topic:692741”]
I seem to recall that my wife’s 2002 Audi A3 had the same deadbolt feature and the same trunk access restrictions.
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Doh! Audi A4.
I had one car that you specifically had to unlock to open. I mean, you weren’t locked inside, but if the door was locked, pulling on the handle wouldn’t open the door. I know there were plenty of other cars like this, but this one had an interesting feature in that doing that, turning on the dome light so if the passenger wanted to look at something (at night, while we were driving) all they had to do was yank on the handle and it turned on, let go of it and it turned off.
ETA, IIRC this was a 98 or so Grand Am.
Speaking as a Certified Master Locksmith who has unlocked roughly 3,000 cars (so far), a common technique is to slip a tool inside the car which can operate the door mechanisms from the inside: push the unlock button, pull the door handle, roll down the window, whatever. Merely pulling on the door handle itself (without touching the lock button first) only works on about 60% of American cars and 10% of foreign cars. On a few German cars, pulling the door handle twice within 5 seconds will open the door but one pull does nothing.
On many German cars, if the driver’s door was locked from the outside with a key the car is deadlocked and the inside lock buttons are deactivated. Depending on the model, there may be an emergency work-around to get the car out of deadlock mode, but the intent is to stop someone who has car opening tools (like the ones locksmiths use) from operating the inside door lock buttons in order to gain access to the car.
Summary: if you are sitting in the front seat of a random car and the doors are locked, just pulling the door handle usually won’t open the door. Usually, you have to unlock it first, and THEN pull the door handle. But even that doesn’t always work.
FWIW, I once got a phone call at 3 AM from someone who said he was locked inside his car and couldn’t get out. I told him to hit the lock button; he said he tried that and it wasn’t working. It turned out that he had been hitting the window button by mistake (thinking it was the lock button) and nothing happened because the ignition was turned off. When he hit the correct button, the door unlocked and he got out. Also, he was stoned at the time, as evidenced by the fact that he (1) didn’t know what street he was on, and (2) asked me to bring him some pancakes.