Truly mundane and pointless… but - well, you know the rest.
I left my dance class last night and walked back to the street where my car was parked. It was late, it was dark, I was not concentrating (not the best state to be in while driving, I know). I put my key in the lock, opened the door, and realized “this is not my car.”
For one, there was nothing inside it; and the owner used an air-freshener of some sort (the smell was what first tipped me off, before I even looked). It was also a different color, and my guess is it was year or two newer (or my car has just had a harder life - I was not the first one to own it.)
Still, the key worked on the door. I re-locked it, and went two cars down to my car, and drove home.
I know that that happens with older cars (they made a certain number of keys and hoped that it was enough to keep people from running into duplicates), but it’s never happened to me before.
It’s happened to my family twice before: both times were with the key to a '67 Mustang. The one time I was present, the key opened up another Mustang of similar vintage. I wasn’t around for the other time, but from what I remember the car wasn’t even a Ford.
I’m the type that’s always tempted to try my keys in various locks, and see what happens… but I generally resist.
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The key in a Camary I used to own was so worn that you could pull it out of the ignition while the car was running. I bet it would have also fit in several other Camarys as well.
Same thing happened to me - I had a kind of nondescript white Dodge. Parked in the mall parking lot and (of course) forgot where. Finally found it, got in and it wouldn’t start…when I helplessly looked out the window my first thought was: “Hey, who stuck that tennis ball onto my antenna?” Second thought: “Who hung that baby shoe onto my rear view mirror?” Third thought: “Who put the books onto the passenger…holy crap that’s NOT MY CAR!”
Yes, it did take that long. I’m just glad it didn’t start, I probably would have driven home all the while wondering why the radio stations weren’t where they were supposed to be.
Ah, fond memories about my car - it was a good little car, though it later exploded in the Disney parking lot
I had the same thought about automatic garage door openers while I was out visiting my folks a few years ago. It occurred to me to wonder if their opener would work on anyone else’s garage (we’re talking the older ones that didn’t have cycling frequencies/signals, or whatever they’re doing now to make them more secure). So I suggested to my Mom that we just start pushing it as we went by houses to see if it opened anyone else’s garage. Her response was an emphatic “No!” (she never lets me have any fun), and a muttered comment that I was too old to be a juvenile delinquent.
Right about then, we arrived at her friends’ house where we were going to drop some stuff off. Mom pulled into the driveway, but it looked as if no one was home. Just as she was getting ready to pull back out, the garage door started to open, and she whips her head around and says, “You pushed the garage door opener?!” I hadn’t, and said so, but she didn’t believe me until it finished going up and she saw her friends in the garage, getting ready to leave.
Really, the timing couldn’t have been better.
[And, Bruce_Daddy I had an old Chevy whose key was that worn for both the ignition and the driver’s door. Slide it in, twist, slide out practically in all one motion. It couldn’t have been slicker with WD-40.]
A friend of mine unlocked and got into a Subaru before he realized it wasn’t his. Same color, just different random stuff inside.
[hijack]Reminds me of when we went to see Star Wars during its original run. We had an International Travelall at the time and none of the locks would work. My Dad would keep a coathanger under the hood and slide that into the window he kept cracked to unlock the door from the inside.
So here we are, on a busy downtown street, waiting for my Dad to work his magic with people looking at us oddly. He even mentioned to someone that the door wouldn’t unlock from the outside. Probably the only thing that didn’t get the cops called on him was the fact that there were four young girls gathered around waiting to get in.[/hijack]
Back on subject, I once lived in a dormatory-type situation where we all had our own rooms but bathrooms and the kitchen were down the hall. One woman was complaining that someone was getting into her room. Management, of course, didn’t feel any need to do anything about it. Finally, some of us got together and tried their keys in each others’ locks. Some found there were duplicates and even triplicates and one poor woman even found that every single key opened her door! Boy, don’t that make you feel safe! Management still didn’t care (long, long story) but they were forced to change the locks of those who wanted them.
It’s slightly Australia-centric, but I remember one time I had just pulled into a parking lot in my 1985 Commodore, and was approached by some guys who were driving a much older car, a Kingswood. Apparently there’s a pretty good chance that the keys on those cars are almost interchangeable. Good enough that it’s worth asking a random stranger in a car to try and open the door to your locked car.
In a slight hijack, but in the spirit of mistaking someone else’s car for yours… I was parked on the street, waiting for my friend to come out of the shop, and Joe Random starts walking towards my car. On arrival at my passenger door, he opens it and gets in. He gets to the point where he has his seat belt on, then looks at me and says “You’re not my wife!”. I’m not sure what eventually triggered that, perhaps the beard.
I would not have let him get so far in if he had not been buried under 6 steaming pizza boxes. I figured, yeah, he might stab me, but I might also get some free Pepperoni pizza, so it was worth the risk.
Back when my father was young (early '50s), he worked at a mechanic’s garage. One day their job was to fix up a car that had been left for them at an adjacent carpark. They spent all day on it, repairing the problems and a few other things as well, and put the car back. The owner showed up at the end of the day, and was all upset because they hadn’t touched his vehicle. Yes, they had fixed someone else’s car, same make, model, year and color, for which the other car owner’s keys fit the locks and ignition.
If you think about it, any key you have has got to open more things than the one you own. There aren’t that many variations on the combination of tumblers; it only stands to reason that there can’t be any such thing as a one-person lock. But the odds of your finding and then being able to drive away in somebody else’s car with your own keys have to be pretty large!
The mention of garage door openers reminded me of what an old friend of mine did while in high-school. Another friend of his had a garage, so they took the opener and slowly drove around the subdivisions at night trying it at every house. They got more than a few open. I don’t think they did anything nefarious with the garages they did get open (although knowing them, I’m not sure), but someone did have a bunch of stuff stolen from their open garage.
I had this happen to me with apartment keys. I was trying to get into the practice space where our band rehearsed so I could drop off a bunch of musical equipment. Usually, the outside door to the building is locked and the security guard opens it. I did not know this. I picked up my set of keys, selected what I though was the key to the music room downstairs (hoping it would also open the main lock) and presto. Door opened. I looked at the key. Wait a second…this key is gold-colored, not silver. That’s not supposed to happen…that’s my apartment key. I checked later on and, sure enough, my apartment key opened the doors to the entire building my practice room was in. I tried all the other keys on my chain – none of them worked except for my apartment key.
The key to my first car, an '88 civic (I think) was capable of starting golf carts. This was when I was in highschool…my highschool had golf carts. IDEA “Hey, lets take the golf carts, my key works!” That was a fun night…at least until the cops showed up the next day. HEHE!
When my parents were dating, for a while they both owned Hondas (this was a time, if I understand correctly, when there were only a handful of different Honda models, FWIW). My dad was able to open and successfully run his car entirely with my mom’s keys.
I may be remembering this incorrectly, but my brother and a friend of his in high school used to be able to trade their keys back and forth. One was for a Datsun, one was for a Mazda.
A few years ago my Dad had a dark blue 4 door Ford Fiesta, and I had a dark blue 2 door Ford Fiesta (basically identical cars). How may times did I come out of the house and try to get into my Dad’s car using my key … ? Never worked of course. And there was someone else in the area who had an identical dark blue Ford Fiesta which lead to much confusion if my Mother, myself and that person, parked our cars in the only car park in town at the same time …
With the remote keyless entry things, how many frequencies are there? If there’s not any encryption, one could go to a lot full of one model car at a dealership and probably unlock a car, if not start it.
My mum and I had a similar experience when she took me to the hospital once. We were in the middle of Leeds city centre parked across the street from the hospital about to head home when my mum realized she had locked the keys in the car. She went to a pay phone (this was before cell phones were wide spread)and called my dad to come and bring something to get into the car (they did not have a spare set of keys) so he drove out with a long, thin piece of wood. Unfortunately the wood broke while he was driving out so we were stuck.
Luckily, the car parked in front of ours was the same make and model, just a different colour and the guy who owned it came back just as my parents were wondering what to do. My dad asked him if he could try his key in our door and it worked perfectly.
I know the cars were Fords but I don’t remember the model. They were estate cars (station wagons) and this probably happened about 12 years ago.
I don’t think its so much a matter of separate frequencies, but a code that is unique to each remote “fob.” I know that the directions for my alarm say that when programming it to accept a new remote, to be sure no one else is operating their remote nearby, or that one may be accepted by the alarm too.
In 1980, I drove a Plymouth Fury III.
For a period fo about three months, I stayed as a long-term guest in a Holiday Inn near Pittsburgh PA.
I discovered that my ignition key would fit the panel inside the elevator. Once the panel was opened, I could turn on access to the basement floor (gameroom and a small pool) after hours.
