I always lock both. The reason is so I don’t have to wonder if I locked them. If I locked one or the other (or both) sometimes but not all the time, then in the middle of the night, or the middle of work, or the middle of the mall, I’d wonder, “Did I lock it/them?” I don’t have to wonder because I always lock both. Simple.
I live in an older residential near downtown neighborhood and houses/cars sometimes get broken into, but that’s not my main reason. My main reason is explained above.
When I lived out in the country for 20 years (1/4 mile off the road-- couldn’t even see my house from the road), I never locked my car at home and always locked it anywhere else. I never locked my house when I was away from home, but locked it at night when I was home. My reasoning WRT the latter was I was so far off the road that if someone wanted to break in, they could stand there and MAKE a key and no one would see them. I’d just as soon they not break a window. However, I didn’t want anyone breaking in when I WAS at home, so I did lock up at night. Never had one bit of trouble.
I’d be crazy not to. I’ve had a car of mine broken into five times in my life (and twice in one week, in two completely different neighborhoods.) All but one of those times was due to someone not locking the door. I’ve had two car stereos stolen and $700 in photography lighting gear. (The lighting gear was just this past December.) Two of the times, nothing was stolen, but an attempt was made (papers ruffled, radio faceplate on the ground and signs of trying to force the car stereo out, etc.)
Lock and lock. Early urban living got me in the habit and I keep returning to living in urban environments. Now, for daytime and I’m home and up and about it’s a looser degree of “lock” – just so that whoever wants in has to get my attention. The door may be open but the ironwork gate is locked, or V.V. But upon retiring I’m quite buttoned up.
(Oh, and all external locks operate on deadbolt only, so I cannot lock myself out. No wandering around the neighborhood in my sleepwear. And I’ve accustomed myself to locking the car either by remote or by twisting the key from outside to avoid doing that there, either)
I always lock up “on autopilot mode” not because I assess the need or threat or whatever is high enough to require it but because I like knowing, if I wonder later “did I?” that the answer is always “yes, of course, when wouldn’t you?”. Default behaviors simplify life.
House is always locked, even when we are home. Daytime break ins have increased in the past year, I would rather make it a bit more difficult for someone to get in. I do, however, leave one of our kitchen windows open from the time I wake up until I go to bed. It’s 6’ off the ground and faces a relatively busy street, so coming in that way would be a little TOO obvious.
Car is locked only when in the driveway or we’re out and about. I do make sure to put it in the garage every night and lock up the garage. When my ex lived here, his car was broken into, so I got into the habit of locking it up back then.
We were told by the neighbors when we had first moved in to our house that there was some property crime in the area, and from what I found online that appeared to be far and away the most common crime in the neighborhood, so we got an alarm system and keep everything locked.
However there have been at least a few occasions I’ve left my car completely unlocked, trunk wide open, even a window or two rolled all the the down, overnight. There’s a lot of foot traffic on our street in front of the house. I’ve got tools and other things in my car and in the morning everything has always still been there, completely untouched.
I believe when most people see a wide open door, even those with casual criminal tendencies (maybe them especially), they assume someone is home and things are being watched, even if it’s open for an extended period of time.
I lock the house when I remember to. The car stays in a locked garage at home so I don’t bother locking the doors. I do lock it when I’m out and about. We have an alarm on the house so even if someone does open the door after I forgot to lock it, it’ll set off the bells and whistles.
When I was a kid, someone tried to break in through our front door once and was stopped by the lock but also jammed it in the process. So we started leaving the front door unlocked since it was always a fight to get the lock to work. Without touching the wisdom of that plan, when the house WAS burglarized, the thieves ignored the unlocked front door and instead kicked open the locked back door. Go figure.
I doubt that a thief could get more than a few hundred bucks for whatever he could carry out of my house. But he could certainly take or break stuff that would cost tens of thousands of dollars to replace, not to mention stuff that’s irreplaceable. So damn straight I’m gonna throw the deadbolts on the way out the door.
The car’s another story. There’s generally a few bucks’ worth of coins in the car, and there might be some bulky purchases of low value in the trunk that haven’t made it into the house yet (e.g. an 8-pack of paper towels). My need to protect these things is minimal.
OTOH, I may want to get something out of the car myself, at a moment when I don’t have the keys on me. That’s a lot easier if it’s unlocked to begin with. This probably happens once or twice a week on average, but nothing noticeable has been stolen from my car in the 20+ years that I’ve had a driveway to park it in. So there’s a tangible upside to my leaving the car unlocked, but if there ever is a downside, it’s likely to be small.
Same here. I never lock my Jeep doors. Plus the driver’s side lock is wonky and might slip and stay locked and I’ll have to crawl over the passenger side. Then take the entire door panel off to unstick it. Major pain in the ass.
My Jeep was rifled a few times during the night (in our suburban neighbourhood, funny how when I lived in downtown sketchville I never had a problem) and they stole the change out of my ashtray. I forgot to fill it back up and a couple nights later they “broke in” again and stole… the packs of gum off my dashboard. So I put a note in my ashtray that says “Get a job and stop stealing my coffee money. PS: When I catch you I am going to break every one of your fucking fingers.” One morning I came out and I shit you not the note was gone. I found it crumpled up around the corner.
I lock the car when I’m out and about, but when I’m home it’s in the garage so it’s unlocked.
I lock the house only when we head to bed. My best friend and her family live next door and we’re in and out of each others house a fair amount so we both keep doors unlocked during the day. Her house has the alarm set to beep whenever the door is opened and opening our triggers the dogs so no one is sneaking in.
In the city we lock and have a security system, although I leave the back door unlocked during the day when the dog is outside and lock it when he’s inside, it’s how I keep track of where he is.
At our cabin we don’t lock anything. It would be trivial to break the single pane glass of the cabin to get in and a pain in the ass for us to replace it so we leave it unlocked. Neighbours live nearby year round and the access is by a single road around the lake. The only time the car was broken into was by a bear on the night we’d packed up the car to go home, the bear pawed at the door until it opened and dragged out half our boxes. Now we lock the car when we pack it.
