I can assure you that the original way was better because you didn’t need to focus where your keys are - they’re in the ignition!
This shouldn’t require too much thought: keyless ignition is simply a way for the car company to make more money off you. If I lose … or even let’s just say I needed [del]a second[/del] an additional key to my old '78 Corolla, I could go to the hardware store and have one made for like $5.
Then came proprietary keys.
Then came chip-implanted keys.
Now, if I bought a car like the 2012 Sentra I rented a couple of weeks ago for my Atlanta trip (go Braves!) and need [del]a second[/del] an additional key, I have to buy it from Nissan for whatever they want to charge me for it. Probably considerably more than $5, I’m guessing.
Is it easier? Sure. That’s the carrot. But that’s not the reason the car companies are doing it.
ETA: changed “a second” to “an additional” because I’m sure someone will point out “they come with two!”
Hmm…
I don’t have and have never tried a car using a FOB but they always seemed like a nice idea. Why do I have to find a place to set my keys inside the car when I never have to take them out of my pocket in the first place?
I’m usually juggling a cup of coffee and a cellphone anyway so it’d be nice not to have to fumble with keys.
And unless you’re talking about cars with hatchbacks or tailgates, don’t you typically always need a key to open a car trunk anyways?
Shelf stable cranberry juice concentrate used to be my go to camping juice. I’m completely bummed that it’s no longer common. It makes it much more of a hassle to make Burning Man Cape Cods.
They don’t force users to pay attention ,they only punish users in unusual circumstances.
With a real key, the operation of the car causes you to know where the keys are. With a fob, the only thing you know is that the fob was in the vicinity of the car when it was started. You don’t know where it is, who has it. It could be in your purse, in your pocket, in the passenger’s purse/pocket, it could have fallen out of your pocket when you got change at the drive thru, it could have been on the roof when you drove away this morning, and is now under a bush somewhere.
Check your owners manual. There may be a way to disable this autolock feature by some combination of pushing buttons, turning the key on and off and reciting voodoo incantations.
Precisely why it forces people to keep track of their keys.
That reminds me of “smart” fridges.
The Fob requires that you press a button to unlock the door, so you’re going to be fumbling with the thing regardless. Assuming you lock your car doors, of course. If you never lock your car doors (where do you live, anyway, to feel that secure? 
) then the FOB makes slightly better sense. Until you drop off your SO with the keys on their person… then it makes no damned sense at all.
No, you don’t need keys to open hatchbacks/tailgates. You press a (manual) button or a (manual) latch.
But this makes no sense. I keep track of my keys in the original setup, why is a FOB a better method of “tracking my keys”? Why is “keeping track of keys” so important an issue that car makers decided I needed to be “taught” a lesson in the importance of this (as the tone of your posts implies)?
It’s around $200 to replace a “smart” key.
Well, that’s kind of dumb then. Why don’t they make them so when you get in proximity of a door the locks pop open? Get out of the proximity and the doors automatically lock. You’d think the pupose would be to never have the FOB leave your pocket.
I suspected as much but didn’t want to WAG. And you have to pay it to the dealer.
Precisely. You do everything as you’ve been trained to do, right until the moment you start the car. And you’ll do it with your keys in your hand because you’ve been doing it that way every day of your driving life.
With the keys in my hand, I then have to unbuckle the seat belt, stretch out in my seat so I could reach into my pockets, put the keys in there, and then rebuckle.
But at least I know where my keys are!!! :rolleyes:
Obviously you have never seen the level of incompetence some people are capable of reaching when it comes to cooking. We regularly have a pre-cooked frozen monkey bread in our freezer. My grandfather-in-law is fond of having it with coffee. Allowing him to do ANYTHING in the kitchen only results in broken plates and spills all over the floor. The frozen stuff does save time (a small amount, but we consider it worth the extra cost).
This is the only useless consumer product I could think of. Not quite in the same league as the banana guard and slicer, but useless none-the-less.
I won’t go so far as to say having a lantern around the house is useless, but I will have to say that the ad campaign for the “Olde Brooklyn Lantern” is clearly aimed at morons.
“Don’t keep flashlights around, they never work when you need them … get the Olde Brooklyn Lantern because it’s got a really bright light!” WTF does that have to do with working when you need it? Does its really bright light not run on batteries, too?
And my favorite idiotic thing they say about it: “Made from genuine metal!”
My keyless cars have an audio alarm if the key is taken away from the car while it’s running.
My MINI would alert you with a sound as well as a key with a slash through it on the display.
My Kia has an alarm that sounds for about 10-15 seconds (I’ve left someone in the car with it running while I went into a store).
You definitely won’t be dropping someone off and leave without the keys without knowing it, at least on these 2 cars.
The car I rented was a Nissan Altima. I did not remove the key while the car was… wait, I did. Left the car running when I ran back into the house - I kept the FOB to see if the car would turn off or something (it’s about a 100-ft distance) and nothing happened: car was still running when I came back, no sound from the FOB (don’t know if the car made a warning sound, though), etc.
Can you still buy those useless stick-on pads for your feet? They draw out mysterious “toxins” that might kill you!