This could really go either here, the BBQ forum or the humble opinion forum, but since I’m posting it just to shoot the breeze rather than rant, I’ll put it here. Over the weekend, a friend (Mary) and I did a trip to another city in a rental car. We rented a GMC Suburban because we needed space for gear and three dogs as well as ourselves. Typical for rentals, the car owner’s manual was not in the glove box, so we couldn’t read up on anything. (We’d looked for it for some question about the nav system.)
Another friend we met at the weekend event figured out because it was similar to his own vehicle that it had the remote start feature. That’s the cool feature where if you need to warm up your car in the morning but want finish your coffee while it warms up, you can start it up from the comfort of your breakfast table (sort of…). Mary had never had a car like that, so as we were leaving the event she decided to try it out.
Before I explain what happened, I need to describe the remote control. As is typical, it had a button to lock the doors, a button to unlock the doors, a couple of other buttons I didn’t pay attention to, and a button with a swirly sort of arrow icon on it that I also ignored. So the other friend figured out that to do the remote start, you had to press the lock button twice and then the swirly button.
After we got our gear loaded, the dogs loaded and only needed to give our friends hugs goodbye, Mary did the remote start, tossed the keys into the driver seat and shut the door. If you’re at all faster than we were mentally, you’ve caught on to the fact that pressing the lock button on the remote locked the doors before it started the car. So, yes, she locked the keys in the car. Kind of a dumb design. I know the GMC designers never intended for someone to remote start the car, toss the keys in and shut the door, but… well, we did. Maybe a better key combo would be pressing lock, unlock, and then swirly.
Although I know if you live in a rough neighborhood, you don’t want someone jumping in your car while you’re sucking down your coffee in the morning and making off with it, so having it locked while it warms up does make sense. But it should have a safety feature where it unlocks if it senses the keys are inside.