# Car features I don't understand - educate me
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [October 7, 2025, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741 "2025-10-07T09:14:37Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 8
### Author:  [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/141 "2025-10-24T12:49:16Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> I walk up, and the car unlocks when I’m (my fob in my pocket really) about 5 feet away. I open the door, hop in, push the start button and drive off. When I get where I’m going I push the stop button, hop out, and walk away. When I (my fob) get about 10 feet away the car locks itself & chirps the alarm to tell me it’s done so.
Yeah - I’m the guy who really prefers NOT to be able to/have to personalize cars/computers in that manner. Perhaps I COULD figure out how to program my car to lock/unlock like that, but mine works fine with me touching the inside portion of the exterior handle to unlock it and pressig a finger to the exterior handle to lock it. Works fine enough that I never considered seeing if it could be done differently.
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> I’m trying to remember the last time there was an exposed mechanical door lock handle / plunger on one of my cars. Maybe 20 years ago?
I sold a car with that system within the past few years. Of course, it was a 62 Corvair! 😉
So how did one lock/unlock their doors in between the exposed mechanical lock/plunger and today’s personalized computer entry? Say, from 2000-2015? Did we all use fobs? Was there some other system before fobs became so ubiquitous? ISTR complaining to a friend that my remote entry did not have much of a range. Seeing as he drove an old Parisienne, he was not sympathetic. Were those the days of large keys with buttons on them? So you pressed a button on the key to lock/unlock the doors and inserted and turned the key to start the car?
Funny how something that was so ubiquitous in the past fades in memory when replaced by a different system.
---
### Author:  [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/142 "2025-10-24T12:52:02Z")
> [@doreen](#):
>
> I can’t even figure out why you would want to lock the fob on the car
I think he is saying he wants to lock the door to bar intruders when the fob AND THE DRIVER are inside.
I did not understand why the passenger door would lock from outside until my wife claimed it was to bar intruders. I really don’t know. Testing all the variables would require 2 people trying out and recording all of the variables, and then repeating with all the stupid settings. For ignorant me, a clear example of technology providing options which vastly exceed my needs/wants.
---
### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/143 "2025-10-24T13:12:55Z")
> [@doreen](#):
>
> I can’t even figure out why you would want to lock the fob on the car
I’m not @Jophiel but I don’t think very many people _want_ to lock a fob in the car.
But because the darn things are bulky, plenty of men take them out of their pants pocket before sitting and toss the fob in a cupholder or similar. Ladies may do the same if they have the fob out in their hand for unlocking the car. Rather than dump it in the purse where it disappears to the bottom, just drop it in the cupholder.
Then later they get out of the car, absentmindedly do the locking gesture on the doorhandle or whatever, and lock themselves out. _Unless_ the car refuses to lock under those circumstances.
---
### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/144 "2025-10-24T13:17:46Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#):
>
> Testing all the variables would require 2 people trying out and recording all of the variables, and then repeating with all the stupid settings. For ignorant me, a clear example of technology providing options which vastly exceed my needs/wants.
Perhaps. In my car’s settings menu there’s a choice written out in plain English:
When unlocking the car with the fob button do you want
Unlock driver’s door only
Unlock driver’s and passenger’s door
Unlock all doors
Unlock all doors and trunk / hatch
That is not very hard to comprehend and requires zero testing. Tap your choice once when you first get the car and from now on your car behaves the way you want, not in some mysterious inscrutable fashion you don’t.
---
### Author:  [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/145 "2025-10-24T13:22:33Z")
Exactly - that’s why the ability to lock the car from the outside while the fob is inside would result in phone calls to bring the other fob - it’s way easier to accidentally leave the fob in the car than it is to accidentally leave the keys - which also happened.
---
### Author:  [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/146 "2025-10-24T13:25:26Z")
I have an older car. So for those of you who don’t remember:
There are buttons inside the door. I can press one to unlock all the doors, and press the other to lock all the doors.
The key also has buttons on it. Pressing the big button locks everything. Pressing the unlock button I’ve unlocks the driver’s door. Pressing it twice in rapid succession unlocks all the doors. A third button unlocks the rear, and a fourth turns on the car’s alarm, which only goes on when that button is pressed (there may be other options, but i hate car alarms and this one is only referred by mistake, rarely.)
If i open the door with the key in the ignition, the car helpfully beeps at me. I don’t know if it will let me lock myself out, I’ve never tried. Probably.
---
### Author:  [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/147 "2025-10-24T13:25:34Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> That is not very hard to comprehend and requires zero testing.
Ah - but first you have to realize there is something called “settings” that you need to access. Then, once you click settings, you may have to choose among audio, car, and possibly other things. And maybe your desired choice does not appear, but you have to realize you need to scroll down.
Yes, I AM THAT clueless and dislike tech that much! 😃
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> When unlocking the car with the fob button do you want
Further, does “unlocking the car with the fob button” apply to what you describe, the car locking/unlocking without pressing a button?
Finally, as a guy who never drives anywhere without a wallet, phone, and inhaler in his pockets, the idea that a car fob (with my house key attached on a ring) is “too bulky” is foreign. When you used to carry keys, you always took them out of your pocket? Or are you wearing those tight-pants-little-boy suits down there in Miami? 😉
---
### Author:  [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/148 "2025-10-24T13:30:00Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#):
>
> There are buttons inside the door. I can press one to unlock all the doors, and press the other to lock all the doors.
Thanks. I guess that is what I (vaguely) recall. So, that was just fine a few years back. In fact, at the time, it was likely viewed as a wonderful innovation - with some old-timers viewing it as an unnecessary complication. But today, pressing the button on the door or fob is just too much of a hassle? Of course, my car’s tailgate opens by itself when I press a button. I occasionally think how laborious it seems to actually have to use some pressure to manually raise my wife’s tailgate. If only I had one of those where I simply waved my foot, and didn’t even need to press a button…
So, if I understand correctly, folk are saying that in newer cars the “lock all doors” button does not lock the driver’s door?
---
### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/149 "2025-10-24T13:36:32Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#):
>
> Yes, I AM THAT clueless and dislike tech that much! 😃
Your choice of course, but you can curse every time you get in the car for the next ~15 years, or spend 5 minutes discovering the setting you need. And 15 more discovering all the settings about everything.
I know which one makes my lifetime blood pressure lower. your mileage may of course be different. _Vive la difference!_
---
### Author:  [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/150 "2025-10-24T13:44:00Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#):
>
> When you used to carry keys, you always took them out of your pocket? Or are you wearing those tight-pants-little-boy suits down there in Miami?
Some men did , even if they weren’t wearing skinny pants. My husband has taken keys out of his pants pockets when he sits for over 40 years, and not just in cars. I can’t count the number of times he has had to go back into a restaurant to get his keys. Now he leaves the other keys in the console and hopefully takes the fob out of the cup holder.
---
### Author:  [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/151 "2025-10-24T13:47:00Z")
If I have my fob in my pocket, and my wife has the other fob in her purse, and she leaves her purse in the car, my car will not let me lock the doors because it senses a fob inside. It seems to me it should also be able to sense the fob outside (in my pocket) and figure out that we’re not locking ourselves out of the car. But I guess it’s not that smart.
---
### Author:  [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/152 "2025-10-24T13:48:42Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#):
>
> So, if I understand correctly, folk are saying that in newer cars the “lock all doors” button does not lock the driver’s door?
On my car, if the driver’s door is locked and I pull on the handle , it unlocks with just a pull. The other doors I have to manually unlock- there might be a setting I can change, but I don’t necessarily want the other doors to unlock when the handle is pulled - I’ve known kids who just might do that while the car is moving.
---
### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/153 "2025-10-24T13:52:22Z")
That’s been me almost forever. Except not with the forgetting part. Or at least only very, very rarely. I hate crap in my pockets. Aways have, always will.
For a few years my “uniform” was cargo shorts. The only pockets I’d use were the baggy ones down on my lower thighs. The four upper pockets that ordinary pants have went unused. With those pants I could leave my keys and wallet and phone pocketed while seated.
---
### Author:  [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/154 "2025-10-24T14:34:24Z")
Me, I’m unimpressed with “panoramic sunroofs”. Call it what it is, it’s a glass roof. The actual retracting part is no bigger. Look: a truck kicks up a rock and it lands on my metal roof, it’s a dent and I keep driving happily for years, who cares. Lands on the “panoramic sunroof”, it means gotta head straight for the auto glass shop.
> [@Spoons](#):
>
> It’s bad enough that North American automakers have basically removed manual transmissions from new car offerings; why are they taking more driver control away?
Some suspicious minds would say, so you HAVE to go thru their proprietary tech to get things done. And be forced to buy again when what you have becomes unsupported.
But, it is also simpler and cheaper to just load up an OS and have everything controlled by it over the network, than have to build the car around physical linkages between the ape and the moving parts. As it is by now a huge share of cars’ “physical” controls are just interfaces for the control module, not levers or rotary switches actually pulling any cable or linkage or closing any relay.
> [@chappachula](#):
>
> Then he refused to buy it.
>
> He told the salesman “I came here to buy a car, but you’re showing me a computer.”
Has been brought up in other threads, it’s not just Teslas ( made as such from the start), it’s most cars that have been turning for years now into network devices that happen to be DOT street-legal.
---
### Author:  [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/155 "2025-10-24T14:54:10Z")
Missed edit window, to add:
> [@JRDelirious](#):
>
> Lands on the “panoramic sunroof”, it means gotta head straight for the auto glass shop.
And of course the features I DO want in the car, are available only “packaged” with the panoramic sunroof…
---
### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/156 "2025-10-24T15:00:06Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#):
>
> Me, I’m unimpressed with “panoramic sunroofs”. Call it what it is, it’s a glass roof. The actual retracting part is no bigger. Look: a truck kicks up a rock and it lands on my metal roof, it’s a dent and I keep driving happily for years, who cares. Lands on the “panoramic sunroof”, it means gotta head straight for the auto glass shop.
At highway speeds, rocks kicked up by trucks tend to damage the front of the car, especially the windshield. It’s hard to imagine a trajectory that would strongly impact a roof, glass or otherwise.
---
### Author:  [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/157 "2025-10-24T15:02:14Z")
It wouldn’t be the Dope without a “well, actually…” response, would it?
Fine, an African swallow drops a coconut. Better? 🤪
---
### Author:  [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/158 "2025-10-24T15:30:59Z")
Yes, push the button (Max!).
i.e. - not using the fob or having the doors auto-lock.
---
### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/159 "2025-10-24T15:53:49Z")
Great explanation.
ISTM …
We each can choose to revel in our Luddism and drive cars from the 1980s or before. Or we can admit time and tech changes and will keep changing whether we like it or not and so best to embrace the ever-onrushing future.
There’s not much of a third way that amounts to anything but recreational outrage.
---
### Author:  [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741/160 "2025-10-24T16:15:58Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> We each can choose to revel in our Luddism and drive cars from the 1980s or before.
I recently went from a 2010 Subaru Outback to a 2024 Chevy Equinox EV. I didn’t expect to like or use many of the new features (blind spot warning, lane assist, backup camera/assist, built in Google/maps/controls) but I’ve fallen in love with them. I really can’t imagine driving a car without them now.
[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741.md?page=7)
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-features-i-dont-understand-educate-me/1023741.md?page=9)