The ‘ridges’ are called the bitting.
Medico, Emhart, and Schlage Primus have that angular bitting and nowhere near impossible to pick.
Thank you for the expertise! Also, I had forgotten the brand of the security locks, but now that you mention it, it was in fact Medico.
My husband’s uncle, who lived in a moderately high-crime part of Brooklyn, had a solid enough lock that it took a licensed locksmith week over an hour to break in. (And the lock had to be replaced, afterwards. He drilled it out.)
So higher-security locks can certainly be had in the US. I’ve always used cheap, low security locks. My risk comes more from drunk kids and “entry level thieves” than from more sophisticated thieves.
Over an hour then break in? Pfft…meet the Lockpicking Lawyer
My MIL had a weird lock where you couldn’t turn it while the key was visible – and the key didn’t have a handle. It was just the shaft of a key, with a hole at the top that held a tough piece of cord. So you literally inserted the key all the way into the lock, with just the cord hanging out, and then turned the tumblers with a weird mechanism built into the lock. I assume it was supposed to be hard to pick. But that one was never tested, as her children had keys, and she didn’t die alone.
Bwahahahaha! You tried to lock the LPL out with a Kwikset! He and Bosnianbill made a tool that makes it harder to pick those just for the fun of it!
If you are going to have a keyed dead bolt on the inside of a door a key near the lock is going to be a hazzard in an emergency. When you leave your home take the key with you keeping the crooks from having an easy time opening the door. When you are home and when you go to bed put the key in the lock that way in an emergency all you have to do is turn the key to get out quickly.
And a short throw dead bolt gives faulse security. My father in law the fire man would tell us that a locked door was not a problem for the firemen. They just kicked the door in the center, the door would bow and open with out damaging the door or the doorway. To be secure you need a long throw dead bolt.
When I turn the key on my front door, it engages three hooked arms into the jamb. There are three solid-looking hinges on the other side so I suspect that a fireman’s boot would have little effect.
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Not sure what is meant here, but my example is typical of many buildings in Switzerland.
Our building is cinder block. The lock is Kaba star, which means we have to use a key to get out our front door. And the door itself is similar to the one described by bob_2:
As we are on the ground floor, there are plenty of other exits. And there are plenty of windows, so a thief could just break a pane of glass to gain entry.
Fortunately that would be noisy and probably someone would notice.
Yup. Because thieves have never heard of hinges, and all your windows are barred or too small to put any thing through, and all your valuables are too large to fit through a window they can enter through, and if you frustrate them in getting away with your stuff they just leave politely without doing any harm to the place. It’s foolproof.
A cinder block building is less likely to become a death trap if the couch catches on fire than is my typical american “stick built” home.
My front and back doors have keyed deadbolts that i only use when we are out of town.
watch the lock-picking lawyer on YouTube. He picks all kinds of locks. Of course he makes it all look easy. And we don’t know how many locks he can’t pick-for some reason he doesn’t post videos of locks he can’t pick. (to be fair, the impression I get watching him is that there aren’t any locks he can’t pick but I am no expert).
He’s been picking since he was thirteen and sometimes he has to use (or design) a special tool for some of the more unusual locks, but yeah, I don’t think there are many pin tumbler locks that can defeat him.
He also has time to work out the more complicated locks before making a video about them. However, I am sure if he could pick almost any household lock in minimal time using a few simple tools, some of which he can find in your house if he doesn’t want to crawl back out through the little window (if for some reason he didn’t simply pick the front door lock to get inside in the first place).
It’s “Medeco”, not “Medico”. The former is a lock brand, the latter is a doctor. 
Medeco used to offer a large amount of money to anybody who could pick their locks. They are very difficult to defeat; pretty much impossible for the average burglar, as they have a long throw and have ball bearings behind the screws that makes drilling a poor option. You’d be better off just using a chainsaw on the door.
This is what happens when you don’t install the ‘locksport’ language pack in your spell check.