I was about to say, absolutely always - we live in Paris, and I can’t imagine leaving my door unlocked. Then I found out my husband left our front door unlocked last night. (There are other doors before you get on to the street, but still, I was a bit disturbed to see it this morning!)
Those of you who leave your doors unlocked while you’re not at home - or who don’t even know where the key is - must live in such a completely different world to me! That’s why I like the internet, it lets me see the ways little things can be totally different, in ways I’d never have thought about.
But we are known to open the main doors to let the breeze in when it’s temperate, but in those cases, we lock the storm doors. Of course, they’re screen and could be cut, but we only leave the doors open when we’re moving about the front of the house (where the doors are) and not when we’re in the back (the bedrooms) or downstairs.
When we lived in the Middle East, we would leave for holiday (3 weeks in Africa for example) and the front door to the house was never locked. Many cars on our street had the keys in the ignition. If it was a cool day, I could leave the front door actually open (no AC yay!) and go down to the shop for stuff and not worry about it.
In the early 90s, a friend of mine in Bahrain would leave his house unlocked for 2 or 3 months while he was in London… and the car was in the driveway with the keys in it.
Um, when the door is locked, yes, you need keys to unlock it. Otherwise, it’s just closed. I also don’t quite understand the posts above saying that with unlocked doors, strangers or children can open the door.
The door to my flat, like all normal doors I’ve seen here in Germany, has a non-turning knob on the outside, and the lock. From the outside, it can only be opened with a key, nothing else, because the knob is just a grip, it doesn’t turn. From the inside, there’s a handle, which you press down to open the door if it’s unlocked. If you lock it from the inside, you need a key to unlock it.
The little deadbolts are opened by a key from outside, and with a little turning knob on the inside.
To make locking myself out by accident less easier, and to find my keys quicker, I hang them over the door handle on the inside. But in the confusion of a fire, if I bump against it, the keys could fall to the floor and … Also, the firemen trying to open the door from the outside have a much harder time if it’s locked. That’s why the lock type is called security locks.
As for all those talking about break-ins: I would really be interested how much statistically the rate of break-ins during the dead of the night while the owners are sleeping in the home is, as this is the typical home-invasion scenario of the gun-users. Are your criminals that stupid? Most break-ins here are during the daylight, when people are at work, or during summer, when people are on vacation, and the criminals always ring the bell first to make sure nobody’s home. Why would they want to run the risk of running into somebody and making their clean crime and getaway complicated?
Yes. I live in the dullest of suburbs, but the front door is always locked unless I’m out in the front weeding the flowerbed or getting the mail/newspaper. (There’s a screen door Mr. Security here is always locking, but I seldom bother.) There’s a door to the garage I leave unlocked only if the garage doors (the no handle kind) are down. The glass slider is closed and locked at night…In hot weather, though, the living room windows are open and sometimes the front door is open to let the breeze in from the open window in the (locked) screen door. So if any passing miscreant or peeper hopes to burst in through the screened living room windows and abduct/murder me through the open window, he has ample opportunity.
In the US most door locks have knobs or levers to unlock the door on the inside; interior doors, like bathroom doors, have locks in the door handle that unlock just by during the handle.
I, too, find the idea of needing a key to get out of your house terrifying.
Even if night time break-ins are less common, I still think basic safety precautions can be taken for when one is most vulnerable.
As for break-ins, in why experience, the most common time for break-ins are at night when the occupants are not at home.
No. Most British front doors automatically lock when you shut the door, but you only have to use a key to get in from the outside; from the inside you just turn the handle.
We never lock ours, even when we go out of town. We live in a safe, rural area and we have three mostly-harmless, dogs. I dunno, if someone is going to break in, I’d rather they not also kick in a door that we’ll have to fix while they’re at it. I just don’t worry about it, and I’ve never been burgled.
Yes. My house actually does have interior doors with old-fashioned warded locks that require a key (long since lost) to lock and unlock from both sides, but every exterior door in every apartment or house I’ve lived in has not had a keyed locking mechanism from the inside. I’ve never needed keys to get out of locked doors in any of my residences except for my time in Hungary. Like I said, to me it seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
But that’s not locked, that’s called a closed door.
In event of fire, a closed door can be opened from the inside by pressing the handle, without key.
A locked door will always require a key, however.
Because a closed door has only the upper part (latch?) resting in the frame, while a locked door has additionally the bolt part moved across with the key - I don’t know all the exact words in English (esp. if the US uses a different key system?) - but here’s a picture of the side of the door. Now imagine a handle likethis on the inner side - pressing it lifts the latch and opens the door - and a non-turning knob on the outer side. Here’s a complete picture.
So a closed door can’t be opened from outside without a key, but from the inside, you don’t need a key.
But if the criminals only break in when the homers are not at home, then the typical “home invasion” scenario the pro-gun-types trot out (OMG we will all be murdered/ raped in our beds! I heard a scary noise in the night, go downstairs and shoot [strike]accidentally your teenager coming home late [/strike] the intruder) isn’t typical, right?
Reminds me of the incident in the Alps about 10 years ago: a couple servicing one our Alpine huts with service* were found murdered, rather brutally. Now, this hut was above 1 000 meters, and not near a cable car, rather, several hours of hiking necessary to get there, so it wasn’t a crime of opportunity. The mountain community was very upset - as in “If the dangerous criminals are even in the remote parts of mountains, we are safe nowhere”.
Police found that two young men from Ex-Yugoslavia had done it, de-sensitized and brutalized because of the war, a senseless killing for no real reason.
But after they’d been caught, the rest of the Alpine huts didn’t start ferocious lockdowns, or keep guns under their bed. It was considered an aberration, an exception nobody can prepare for, with the usual criminal not wanting to make the effort of travelling to the countryside/ the mountains / a lonesome place.
(And in the cities, we have what’s called a police, which is expected to do its job and catch criminals. A court ruling like in the US that because the police can’t prevent all crimes, they don’t have to do anything, or police departments in city X simply being “ineffective” for ages wouldn’t be accepted here).
We have different types of mountain huts: those owned by the Alpine Club and leased to a couple who runs a service there (food, drinks, mattresses for sleeping) against money; those owned by the Alpine Club without service (you bring your own food and clean up after yourself, if possible, restock the wood); and privately owned for-profit huts which offer service.
Pretty sure this is a language/culture difference. In the US I’ve never once seen a door that locks from both sides, and I’m pretty sure it would be a safety code violation (so you won’t see it in an apartment ever).
In the US “closed” usually means… simply closed, but can be opened from either side without a key. Locked means you need a key to get in from the outside.
To the OP: We don’t lock during the day, as the kids are in and out quite a bit. The idea that we’d keep the door locked while the kids were outside playing is kind of silly to me.
Chances of something happeing are small if not nil, yet I keep the doors locked most of the time. If we are out in the yard, around the house, it’s all open. If we leave for ay length of time we lock up. Home alone inside, the doors remain locked.
Rural area, yet we do get the random stranger driving through scoping out the neighborhood. One guy knocked on my door and tried to grill me about a derelict vehicle in my neighbors yard, he asked questions about my neighbor, his age, his comings and goings, I had none of it as it pinged my bs meter and i suspected he wanted to steal it. I encouraged him to leave his info as I would be happy to see that junker gone, but he backed off and left in a hurry.
Eastern Europe, six-story building with intercom in suburb neighborhood.
I always have the door locked whether I’m at home or not. Especially if I’m not home or I’m sleeping at night. It’s mostly psychological for me, I like to feel saf
I hate this concept. It’s simply an invitation to get locked out of your house when getting the mail, or taking in the trash can. I disabled my door’s automatic door handle lock, and use a deadbolt to lock the door. If you lock the door with the key, it’s impossible to lock the key in your house (or car).
constanze, if you close your front door, and you don’t have a key with you, what do you call it? Locked out? Then the door is locked.
How in the world can it be a safety code violation if the door can be opened from the inside? Small children can press the handle and open the door (though of course you tell them to not open it).
This is really hard to make sense of for me: on the one hand, Americans are afraid of gangs of psychopaths breaking into their homes and murdering them in their beds - but instead of getting solid doors and good locks, they keep guns. Because that’s the logical solution?
You can disable that? I guess I could tape the upper part of the latch or something, but why would I? I have a rather secure lock, in order to be safe from all those bad people out there (oooh, scary!).
Because when I put the key into the lock from outside and properly lock it, the real bar slides across, which means a properly locked door is much more sturdy and harder to break into than just a closed one.
That’s why the courts have ruled on whether you are required to lock your door in order to avoid neglience (which voids insurance claims). The courts ruled that if you go around the corner for 10 min. of shopping during the day, closing the door is enough, but if you are gone for longer or in a bad part, you are required to properly lock the door (and close windows).
You are not, however, required to lock the door at night, because of fire exit, and because criminals don’t break in while people are inside.
So that you could walk out your front door to get the mail without having to bring your keys with you. So that you reduce the chance of locking yourself outside of the house. My front door lock has two buttons on the door edge, push one in, and the latch operates freely, push the other one in and the outside knob will not operate the latch, you must use the key.
The issue is simply one of definition. It’s odd for me to think of a door as not being locked when I need to use a key to get back in, and would consider myself locked out if I didn’t have the key.
I also don’t quite understand the posts above saying that with unlocked doors, strangers or children can open the door.
