I’ve recently decided that locking a car is almost entirely pointless. Bust a window and the repair will cost more than just about anything you’d dare leave in a big display case in public.
If you could buy a car without locks, would you? Just pull the door handles and they open. The trunk would be lockable with no inside release.
I don’t lock my car. I also don’t leave anything I value in my car. I pretty much agree with you that locking a car means a broken window as well as losing anything in it. I do use a fork lock on my bike, but thats just so I can look like one of the in crowd, not because it would stop 3 guys and a pick up truck from taking it away.
Sure locking your doors isn’t going to stop a dedicated thief but it’s certainly a deterrent.
Breaking windows tends to be obvious, while no one is going to give a second thought to someone simply opening a door to gain access.
Yeah I lock my doors. No I wouldn’t buy a car without locks.
I carry insurance that includes glass, if someone breaks into my car both the glass and the contents are covered.
The only time it’s “pointless” from a theft standpoint is if your car is the only attractive one around, and frankly, you shouldn’t leave valuable stuff out in sight to increase its attractiveness in the first place. Otherwise, having it locked usually means that they’ll go for a car that’s unlocked instead since it’s easier, and less likely to draw attention, than busting a window.
Most thieves that ransack cars are opportunistic thieves. Meaning they will go for the easiest target. An unlocked car is definitely easier to get into than a locked one. Most of these thieves (or at least many of them) wont go to the level of breaking windows and if you leave your car unlocked you are only inviting your car to be looted. Now there may not be much of value worth looting inside your vehicle, but chances are a thief will find something worth taking (CD’s, phones, loose money, etc.). Perhaps it’s because I grew up in a ghetto city, but I could never imagine not locking my car, let alone buying a car that didn’t have locks.
Certainly, I lock my car, and just as certainly, I wouldn’t buy a car without locks. I’m not going to make it easy for thieves to rifle my car. They can just wander along and check the next car door in the parking lot.
I don’t leave anything laying around in plain sight that would spur a desire for a thief to break the windows, and I’ve never had so fancy a car that they might want to take their chances on what’s hidden.
And if a junkie or common thief happens to get a wild hair up their ass and decide to break my window so they can ensure that I have only my registration and insurance in the glove box, well hell, shit happens. That’s why I pay perfectly good money for insurance, eh?
Thieves will try every car door on a dark street or in an unwatched parking lot to see who forgot to lock the door much, much more often than they will break a window on every car on the street or in the parking lot to see if there’s something inside worth stealing. If you own a car and have parked it on the street or in a large, unwatched parking lot it’s a fair bet that somebody has tried your door a few times to see if you forgot to lock it.
I don’t lock my car for two reasons.
The car that I own locks its own doors when I (and the key) are more than about 20 feet away.
The car that I’m currently driving is in the Falkland Islands. Since the entire country has fewer than 3000 inhabitants, theft is not a problem.
I might just be an outlier in this poll 
I have heard anecdotes from folks who drive or drove soft-top convertibles that it’s better to leave the top down while parked, which amounts to the same thing as leaving it unlocked, as a thief would be more likely to tear the top than break a window if they wanted to get in, and those tops are ridiculously expensive.
I keep my car locked to deter casual thieves, though I also try to have nothing valuable visible. Only once in the last 7+ years has someone taken the time to bust a window to get at my stereo. I now take the stereo face off every time I park for the night.
My wife used to have a shitbox MGB convertible with psychedelic paint on the hood. She left the doors unlocked and signs on the windows saying: DOORS ARE NOT LOCKED! And of course, some fucker sliced the softtop to rip out her AMFM radio. :rolleyes:
Why would I set myself up for easy robbery or vandalism? Even if there is nothing on the seat there is always the glove box and under the seats. Criminals will want to check and maybe slash the seats, pull some wires, or whatever when not finding something. There is no upside to walking around with a sign on your back that says “Kick Me.”
If I didn’t lock my car, how would I know that there wasn’t an ax murderer hiding in the back seat?
I don’t lock my car when I’m in the town I live in, as it’s the functional equivalent of Mayberry, but I wouldn’t buy a car without locks. I do lock the car whenever I travel to larger cities.
I don’t lock my doors, but damn, who would buy a vehicle without doors !!!
If there’s not someone in the car, or loading the car, then all doors are locked. Yes, even if it’s in my driveway. I got into this habit because in my old neighborhood, there were people who would check all car doors to see if they were unlocked. Sometimes these people were kids, sometimes they were adults. I live in a nicer neighborhood now, and our driveway goes from the street to the back of the house, so an opportunistic thief would have to make more of an effort, but it’s just something that I do as a habit.
Even if I customarily left my car doors unlocked at home, what about when I go shopping? I might need to make several stops, and I think that putting things in the trunk is a pain. I have arthritis in my shoulders (and in other places, too), and sometimes opening and especially shutting the trunk is hard to do. I’ll do it if I have something especially tempting…but if my arthritis is really acting up, I just won’t go out.
Ask your local police about the statistics of stolen items from cars, and stolen cars, broken down by whether the car was locked or not.
I always lock my car doors (even when I’m driving). I also don’t leave anything worth stealing out in plain sight (I often take my wallet out and leave my purse, but I hide it in my car). When we went to a hotel last week, we noticed an SUV with the interior light left on in the parking lot. The woman’s purse was also left open on the passenger seat - dude, that is such a bad idea! Why don’t you just put a sign on the car saying, “Hey, thieves! Come and get it!”? (We told the front desk about the light left on, and people came out right away to look after it. I hope he got his wife’s purse, too.)
I was gonna say this. My car locks itself - it’s impossible to “not lock” it. I thought most modern cars had this feature and only the old beaters still had manual locks.
I’m obsessive about locking my car. I’ll lock it twice while I’m walking away and there’s been times when I’ve walked back to my car to make sure I locked it (and it’s always locked).
So no, I would not buy a car that didnt have locks.
I’ve had stuff taken from my car with it locked (broken windows, yes, plural) and unlocked.
When it was locked, I was moving and had much of my life in the van. It’s unsettling to find one’s bra on the sidewalk. But, the stuff taken was easily replaced. I picked glass out of stuff for the next year.
When it was unlocked, the stuff taken was incidental, a little change, a 5 year old voice recorder and a pair of binoculars I got free for calling in a radio station. No glass in my *ss.
It was still an invasion, but, I’d rather just lose stuff and not have to deal with the broken windows.
Years ago someone, I believe kids, repeatedly broke in to my car parked, out of sight, at the back of our apartment block. All they ever took was the few dollars in it the first time. I made sure nothing was left in the car overnight and started leaving it unlocked so that I didn’t run the risk of them fucking up the door locks.
It was a regular event to go out to get in the car and find it open with the doors not properly shut.