How hard is it to pick up an imported car from a port? This is a question I’ve only asked myself once in my life because the answer is it’s so easy I’ve picked up cars all by myself twice rather than hiring someone to do it. Yet, somehow, I just turned a simple road trip for a port pickup into something so disastrous that it could have been torn out of a National Lampoon script. In the span of just twelve hours, I lost the key to a $111,000 truck, got another truck stuck while saving the first truck, and endured the most harrowing ordeal I’ve ever experienced on the road.
What you’re about to read is a tale of woe and stupidity. Trust me, I don’t need to be told that what I did was dumb. Not only did I live through this, but I experienced nightmares about it afterwards. However, maybe you’ll be a bit entertained by the chaos and hopefully never make the mistake I did.
This drive was supposed to be my dream road trip of this summer. I was driving out to the port to pick up a cool little car. My wife was going to get some much-needed time away from the courtroom. Ford even loaned me one of its coolest trucks, the new 2025 F-350 Super Duty Platinum Plus in a dual rear wheel configuration with a 6.7-liter Power Stroke High Output diesel engine. I actually asked Ford for the biggest truck in the press fleet. In part because I wanted to try an F-450, and in part because of the visual of the biggest truck hauling one of the smallest cars.
(Full Disclosure: Ford loaned me a 2025 F-350 Super Duty Platinum Plus for a little over a week to haul home my new-to-me 1997 Honda Life. Ford took such great care of me during this whole ordeal, and I cannot find the proper words to thank those lovely people enough.)
Sadly, the new F-450 on the press fleet wasn’t ready to hit the road yet. That didn’t matter because the truck that I did get was phenomenal. This 2025 Ford F-350 Super Duty DRW is now my second favorite new truck, only behind another Ford product, the F-150 FP700. If you gave me the choice of a new Mercedes-Benz or this truck, I would choose the truck in a heartbeat. But that is a story for my road trip review.
Instead, this is how I nearly ruined everything in the 11th hour.
A Big Truck With Long Legs
The drive out to Baltimore to pick up my 1997 Honda Life was supposed to be simple enough. I did this drive in the past to pick up my 1989 Suzuki Every van, and this time I figured I was going to avoid the mistakes of last time. This time, I was going to leave home bright and early so I didn’t have to drive through darkness for the majority of the route like I did last time.
This was a great choice as I got to witness just how beautiful this nation is. If you think this country is not much to look at, just hit the road towards any random direction, drive at least a few hundred miles, and you will not be disappointed.
For me, the scenery started changing on the Ohio Turnpike as the flatlands of the Midwest began turning into rolling hills. Those hills then morphed into Appalachia as I drove through Pennsylvania. I was captivated by the East Coast, and fascinated that I missed all of this last time just by driving at the wrong time of day.
Sadly, I never really stopped to take it all in. See, the F-350 Super Duty has a 48-gallon fuel tank, and the truck was getting 17.2 mpg with the empty U-Haul Auto Transport on the back. The Port of Baltimore was 773 miles from home and according to the truck’s fuel range guess-o-meter, I was going to make it to Baltimore was 30 miles of range to spare.
Making it to Baltimore on nothing more than stops for food breaks sounded exciting to me, and it sort of became a game to drive the huge truck at a relaxed speed to see my fuel economy get better. I stopped only three times on my way to Baltimore. I stopped on the Indiana Toll Road for lunch and at one more place in rural Maryland for fuel. I figured I should get fuel while it was cheap because it wasn’t going to be cheap near the port.
It was the third stop that did me in. Sheryl and my birds weren’t able to join me because of a scheduling conflict. So, Sheryl watched me make regular trip reports. Her suggestion was that I should eat dinner at a place called Ledo Pizza, a Maryland chain known for its unique sauce and rectangular shapes.
Based on my time of arrival, my best shot at hitting a Ledo Pizza before they closed for the night was to stop at the one in Hagerstown, Maryland. Besides, some huge evening construction work on I-70 East sent me on a detour through the city, anyway.
I stopped by the Ledo Pizza in Hagerstown, ordered my pie, and proceeded to be amazed by my wife’s dinner suggestion. Sheryl wasn’t lying. Both the sauce and the cheese were something I hadn’t tasted before here in the Midwest, and the crust was perfectly thin and just the right amount of crunchy. I highly recommend a visit to a Ledo Pizza if you’re ever out there.
The Dumb Decision That Changed Everything
Anyway, I do not eat in press vehicles, so I planned on dropping the tailgate and eating there. Accompanying me with the box of pizza was the truck’s key fob. I started thinking, and I decided to put the key somewhere safe. I’m not sure why, but I had this fear of leaving the key in the truck, the truck locking itself, and I’d end up stranded some eleven hours away from home with a fancy truck that’s not mine.
Logically, the solution to this worry would have been to open a window, or put on my jean jacket and put the key in the jacket, or take the key to the tailgate where I was eating, or put the key in my purse. Honestly, there were probably a million different things I could have done better. Maybe it was the 11 hours of straight driving, or maybe it was a brief moment of profound stupidity. I’m not sure what went through my head, but I plopped the key down on the cowl just in front of the windshield.
How stupid was this? Had I just walked literally two more steps, I could have put the key into the center console, where it would have been safe. But I didn’t do that. Instead, I enjoyed my pizza, hopped into the truck, and beat it to the I-70 East entrance that was just a mile down the road.
What Was That Noise?
As I throttled out of the cloverleaf and onto the Interstate, I heard a thump. Now, the truck does make thumping noises on its own, specifically when the electric running boards reach their closed position seconds after you get into the truck. I thought to myself, “Did the running boards just close?” But this didn’t make sense, because it wouldn’t have made sense for them to be open, anyway.
I then feared that maybe I left my purse, jacket, or phone on the outside of the truck, but nope, all of those were present. I thought that it must have been a rock kicked from the tires or something, as I rocketed past a sign stating that Baltimore was only 77 miles away. I was only an hour from my goal.
Then, it hit me. The truck’s key wasn’t next to my phone in the center console, where it had always resided for the whole trip. Then, it hit me again. I left the key on the cowling! Holy crap! My brain immediately went into panic mode. First, I thought that I’d just take the first exit, double back to where I heard the thump, and then use the truck’s super bright LED headlights to find the key. Sure, I’d have to drive dangerously slow and hold up traffic in a lane, but the F-350’s headlights basically turn night into daylight. I figured I wouldn’t block traffic for that long.
Then, I realized that the nearest exit was pretty far out. I then began to fear that the further I drove away from the key, the more unlikely it would be that I’d ever find it again. I was also a bit weirded out that the truck itself didn’t give me a warning or anything about the missing key. Based on the lack of a warning from the truck, I began to think that, wait, maybe the key was still on the truck, or maybe it was on the tonneau cover, or something.
The Ford Bricks Itself
I quickly, but gently, pulled off onto the shoulder, then put it into park. The moment I moved the shifter into that position, the truck finally sounded the “No Key Detected” warning and then shut itself down. Unfortunately, my hunch that the key was somewhere in or on the truck was wrong.
But what was even worse at that moment was how the truck effectively bricked itself. It locked me out of all major functions. I could not turn on accessory mode. This meant that I had no control of the windows, either. It was a cool night, so I had the sunroof in the fully open position in addition to the rear sliding window and the driver window. But no matter what I did, the truck wouldn’t let me close them. The only function the truck let me have was the ability to adjust my seat, turn on the infotainment system, and hit the hazards. Basically, I could jam out to my music and listen to the GPS bark at me to stay on I-70 for another 73 miles, but that’s it. As far as the truck was concerned, I was screwed.
Panic really set in then. Ford gave me resources to call in case of an emergency, but I knew from the start that none of them were going to be able to help me. Ford Roadside Assistance would not have the power to magically conjure a key. My press contact could reasonably be expected to have a backup key, but they were a full seven-hour drive away in Detroit – and the likelihood of them answering the phone at 10 p.m. was low, anyway. Calling the police wasn’t going to help me, either. At the very best, the only help anyone could give me was driving me to a hotel. I’d have to abandon the truck on the highway.
I made the subsequent bad decision to try to find the key. There were four major problems with that idea. One was that I had made it about a mile past the point when I heard the thump, so that’s just a huge search area to cover. The second issue was that it was pitch black with cloud cover. Then there was the fact that I was on a very busy Interstate corridor with semi-trucks blasting by every few seconds. Finally, the only light I had on me was my phone’s flashlight, which meant I would only have a narrow field of diffuse light.
Few Options, And I Chose The Worst One
I made the risky decision to search for the key. The key came off the truck when I was in the left lane, so I figured it would probably be on the left side, either in or near the median. I felt a little better about walking the median thanks to the guardrail that was there, but it was still outrageously dangerous. Had any one of those drivers not been paying attention, been distracted, or drunk, they would have wiped me off the planet, and no one would have known until morning. Twice, semis came pretty darned close to hitting the guardrail with me on the other side.
My search was desperate. I went perhaps five feet at a time, checking every place I could. Plants in the median caught my dress. Other flora scratched my ankles. My feet sometimes struggled as the median’s wet terrain sank under my steps. But I had to find that key.
I found a lot of things that weren’t the key. I discovered a complete animal skeleton, minus a head, and large enough to be mistaken for a small person. The bones suddenly appearing in the light of my phone was such a shock that I bolted, fight-or-flight style. I came across perhaps a half-dozen more dead animals, their fur and skin still intact. I also found a broken iPhone, two Android phone cases, a garage door opener, toys, empty cigarette cartons, and countless empty liquor bottles. There were also innumerable chunks of rubber shed from semi-truck tires. I was frequently excited by the sight of something black and fob-shaped on the ground, only to have excitement replaced by crushing disappointment when it was just another hunk of tread from one of 18 wheels.
After what felt like forever’s worth of time, I made it to and past the area where I heard the thump and did not find the key. I considered taking another walk through the median, but a construction worker saw me and flagged down the state trooper who was protecting the highway works site.
I explained everything that had happened to the state trooper, and he felt so bad for me that he didn’t even talk about how illegal it was for me to be walking the median. He just wanted to get me somewhere safe and cleaned out the front seat of his cruiser for me to ride in. He confirmed my fear, too. There was nothing he could do but take me to a hotel. So, he did that.
As we pulled up to the hotel, I asked him if he could go back to the truck and turn off the hazards so the battery wouldn’t drain. He recommended that I get an Uber to take me back to the truck, remove my valuables from the truck, and then have the Uber take me back to the hotel.
Not Giving Up Yet
Getting Uber to drop me off on an Interstate was quite difficult. The app doesn’t permit drop-offs on highways, so the app ended up choosing a random address that was technically next to the F-350. When the Uber got there, I explained the situation. I then got into a debate with the nice man behind the wheel about dropping me off into a dangerous situation and how he wasn’t able to do that. Eventually, I got through by telling him that if he got me to the Ford, he would be helping me salvage what was left of one of the worst nights of my life.
He reluctantly agreed to take me to the truck and got me there, but sped off the second I closed the door behind me. I had offered to pay him more to get me back to the hotel, but he wasn’t having it.
Once I got to the truck, I decided to try something different. I called up Ford Roadside Assistance, and a kind man tried to keep me calm even though I was freaking out and fraying at my ends. First, he walked me through an attempt to pair the truck to the FordPass app on my phone. If successful, the app might have been able to give me temporary emergency control of the truck’s ignition. At the very least, I might be able to close the windows and the sunroof.
This was unsuccessful because a previous journalist had already paired their phone to the truck. The only way to add a new phone to the truck would be to delete the previous phone, which you can do only if you have the fob on you. Next, the Ford Roadside Assistance rep attempted to call two Ford dealership service departments in Hawai’i, which were known to have some staff still around at the time he called. Unfortunately, neither dealership answered the phone.
Left without any real option, Ford Roadside then tried to get me a tow truck. I waited for perhaps an hour as the Ford Roadside guy called around. There wasn’t any wait music or anything, so most of the time I had no idea if he was even still there anymore. Hopelessness slowly crept in as I sat on the side of the highway, unable to change the situation that I had caused.
Eventually, the voice crackled back onto my phone speaker, and I could tell that the man on the phone was disappointed. Ford Roadside said that because I was in a dually truck, he couldn’t find a single tow company with the equipment to save me that night. He said the best he could do was have a tow truck dispatched out there by 8 a.m. the next morning.
Unfortunately, it was around this time that I felt a raindrop hit my head. Panic joined back in with the hopelessness as I cried out to the Ford Roadside rep that it was beginning to rain and, as we had established earlier in the call, the truck was bricked. The only advice the fella was able to give me was to fashion some sort of makeshift tarp out of the vehicle’s floor mats.
As it happened, I did bring wood boards to help load the car onto the U-Haul trailer and I also had a blanket, too. I used the boards to create a structure over the sunroof opening. Then I draped the blanket over the opening, securing it by slamming fabric into the truck’s doors. Then, I layered all of the truck’s floor mats on top. It was janky, it wasn’t weatherproof, but it was better than nothing, I guess. Then, on the advice of Ford Roadside, I closed up the truck and got out of there.
Rock Bottom
As if my night wasn’t hard enough, I couldn’t convince Uber to pick me up off the side of the highway. So, I went back into the median. I then proceeded to do my stupid search all over again, but this time with a little rain making things extra miserable. Once I reached the construction site, another Maryland state trooper found me, got me off the highway, and into the relative safety of their cruiser.
This officer saw I was at the end of my rope and tried to distract me by talking about cars. Through him, I found out that Maryland often buys the slowest cop cars out there, with some cruisers topping out at only 130 mph. The ride to the hotel turned into an impromptu ride-along as we came across a lady driving a Lexus GX on a bare wheel. Our “chase” went no faster than 28 mph, and, conveniently, she pulled off the road in front of the hotel.
By now it was 2 a.m., or about four hours after I lost the key. I was exhausted, I was depressed, and I was beaten. I thought of myself as an idiot and as a failure. All I had to do was put the key in the truck. Now, I caused one of my worst nightmares. I continued beating myself up as I struggled to fall asleep that night.
I’m not sure if there’s a moral or a lesson for me to give to you here. I mean, I learned a lesson and I learned it the hard way. I’m not sure I will ever forget that night or the asinine behavior I displayed in just a few hours. But if I can find some sort of piece of advice, it’s probably that you should never let that key fob out of your sight. Maybe put a tracker on it if you have to. But absolutely don’t put it on top of your vehicle. Also, walking the median could result in the loss of your life, so don’t do that, either.
Somehow, I wasn’t done causing myself misery yet, but that’s going to be a story for next week.
Top graphic images: Mercedes Streeter; depositphotos.com
What I have learned from all of this is that the highways are full of crazy people at nights.
I think you brought that conclusion to the story, becasue it is not to be found in it.
Because you were brave and offered your story, I am going to return the favor and share my idiotic story.
The day before my family moved from one state to another, I drove off with the keys to my 2024 Tiguan on the roof. My son and I were headed to Goodwill to drop off some furniture that we no longer needed (who doesn’t love the downsizing associated with moving from a small town to a big city?). I loaded him, put the keys on the roof, and drove off. Since the keys only need to be in proximity I could drive!
Then I heard the noise. That triggered my memory. I pulled over as soon as I could, collected my son, and we started walking down the sidewalk (thank goodness for that!) and I saw my keys!
Right as a Dodge Ram 3500 dually drove directly over my entire key ring.
The VW key fob, to it’s credit, was slightly cracked, but worked immediately. It’ll be a $500 problem later on when it has to be replaced, but crisis was averted.
Happens to the best of us at the worst times!
Scene: beachtown, Delaware. Me in the passenger front seat. My wife is driving. 25 mph town road. Ongoing marital quarrel has it that she “does not like protocols.” We dry out and kick the sand, get in the 2nd gen Prius, and off she goes.
Just as she’s joined traffic, I remind her key is on the roof. The first thing she does in the following 30 second long sequence is PANIC.
She hits the brakes, which cause key to fall down forward per intertia, through the front hood, and in front of the car. She swings the door and gets out. She never put the car in park….
I start having this out of body experience where I notice the car starts rolling forward (nobody is pressing the brake anymore) and wonder if my wife will get run over. But she notices too and runs back into the car. At this point, we both hear the car run over the fob….
The Prius has an unusual shifter, so she hops back, puts it in reverse, and hops out again. The car starts rolling back. My out of body motionless freeze continues. A busy town intersection has come to a quiet fullstop, watching the scene unfold. My wife is in a bathing suit top and towel around her waist.
We both hear the car back over the keyfob again. Cars in front and behind us start slowely getting out of the way…
She runs back in, presses everything four times. That didn’t do it. I somehow emerge from the physical turpor and press the Park button, which I believe is not the same as the shifter. Car stops.
Keyfob was fine. Her sense of self…. not so much.
I am so sorry to hear this. Sadly I am an 90 minutes away but would have gladly helped you out. I do hope you were able to try the Royal Farms fried chicken and western fries.
I like the old days when you can just slap a $2 key somewhere under the vehicle,
First and foremost, I am glad to hear you are ok.
But I have to point out a concern. You said the drive was 773 miles, which is a heck of a long one day drive solo. When I was younger, sure, I could knock off a 14 hour drive fine, but as you get older you need to adjust expectations. (I drive solo 8-9 hours max nowadays. With a strong preference for daytime driving.)
Assuming you drove non-stop, this was a 12 hour drive at 65mph. Add another 1-2 hours for your two stops. A total trip time of 13-14 hours. So you were 12+ hours into your drive I would guesstimate when things went bad.
Everything you describe with your decision making process after realizing you lost the key makes you think you were sleep deprived and probably should not have been still driving. (And the way you also threw the keys in a stupid spot and quickly forgot they were there as well points to you also being already very tired.)
I can absolutely accept stopping on the side of the highway, but everything beyond that showed you were not thinking clearly. Yes panic can be a horrible thing, but I worry that this was amplified because you were driving while way too tired. There was rationally zero chance you could find a key that flung off a car at highway speeds in the middle of the night. Zero. Yet you did it twice.
In the end, I’ll leave it to you to consider that perhaps you were driving too tired to be safe and thinking clearly. Driving while tired is extremely dangerous.
Accepting that something you used to be able to do easily is part of getting older. Drive safe everyone.
First, glad to hear you are OK. Quite an ordeal, and it’s pretty lucky there was construction with State Troopers nearby.
I do have trackers on all my keys, as I have misplaced them in the past (but only around the house). I also always have the keys on me when driving – I never just leave them in the car. Less easy when wearing a dress rather than jeans though I imagine.
Seconded. Granted most dresses don’t have pockets, but the answer is pockets. Pockets and consistency. Keys in the right, phone in the left, wallet in the back – then I never have to look for these things!
Terrible ordeal, but on first glance of the top picture with the truck, I70 sign, and the title of “nearly killed me,” I immediately thought you may have been involved in that terrible crash on I70 out in Colorado earlier in the week. Glad it wasn’t so!
My son-in-law dropped his key fob playing disc golf once. The whole family got in on the search to find it, and fortunately we did. On his way home he ordered an Airtag to add to his key ring.
I drive a Chevy Equinox with a fob, and I feel like this is the worst era for car keys.
The wireless keyfob is too big for me to want to put on a keyring. So I leave the fob completely by itself and I tuck it into the watch pocket of my jeans. For that case, it’s kind of great. I can unlock the doors or pop the hatch without pulling the fob out of my pocket.
But twice I have lost my fob for weeks at my house, both times it ended up being deep inside the depths of my couch, even after looking there multiple times. I end up having to use my spare key fob that my wife keeps, being deathly afraid of losing it over the course of those weeks.
Other times, we have taken the car on longer trips, so I ask my wife to make sure she carries her keyfob with her, just in case of emergencies like this. However, if we make a quick stop and she doesn’t feel like carrying her purse into the store and leaves it in the car, the car makes obnoxious horn honks to inform any would-be car thieves that we just walked away from the car with a fob in it.
We live in an era where technology can solve any issue, so when there is a failure, like the issues that Mercedes went through when she did something that feels very much like something most people would do in that case, the problem isn’t a failure of engineering. It’s a problem of policy. The car companies are making a conscious decision to make their product worse.
The real blame here lies on Ford and their removal of the key pad on the drivers door to lock and unlock the vehicle on the newest models. It’s probably one of my favorite features on my 21 F150.
Couple weeks ago I was at a friends lakeside cabin for the weekend. I was terrified of losing my keys or forgetting my wallet. So I put them in the center console and just used the key lad all weekend and never had to worry about it. It was glorious.
This is the natural outcome of the fob nonsense. I know people lose their keys all the time, but a normal key would prevent the “bricked on the highway” death scenario. And you can hide a spare key in on on the vehicle without it being able to be driven away by anyone at any time.
That said I’ve left all kinds of things on the top and hoods of cars (mugs, clipboards, binders with the company gas card, notebooks). Thankfully but some bizarre luck I’ve always been able to go back and find them. But I’ve also got lost item OCD. One time I had to rent a special metal detector that was accurate for titanium to find a lost wedding ring that slipped off my hand into a lake while handling an extra slimy trout.
You can get an rfid pouch to put a fob in and then hide it somewhere inside the vehicle. Then use the keypad or a dummy key (just the cut metal, no transponder/fob) to get back inside. We do this when out on the water so we don’t lose/damage the fob.
This is some sound thinking. Thanks.
When you get a press car like this, do they give you a gas card or are you responsible for the fuel?
I’m responsible for fuel! I think I spent a touch over $300 on diesel.
I’ve configured my accord to not lock the doors with the fob in the car. It blips a couple of times and flashes the lights if the fob is in the car and you close the door on exiting. Had to dig deep into the owners manual and menus to find the setup.
Young Otter, on the first solo road trip of his life, sits eating lunch at a McDonald’s in the middle of Indiana, looking out the window at his dad’s ’81 Accord hatchback. It’s 1989 and he’s driving back to St. Louis to graduate from college after being abroad for his final term. The keys are locked in the car, clearly visible on the driver’s seat, and he saw them the moment the door closed.
So he’s had plenty of time to think. It’s a warm, early-June day, and the crappy aftermarket sunroof is cracked about two inches at the back. He picks at his fries and plans to break into it so quickly and calmly that no one in the packed restaurant calls the police. He contemplates the security flaw in the sunroof that he has noticed but never exploited: it should be possible to reach through that crack and release the back of the sunroof, allowing the back to open a few more inches, reach through that to release the latches at the front, remove the entire sunroof, reach in, and retrieve the keys. He rehearses the crime in his head, visualizing the exact location of the latches. He plans the weary body language of someone who does this so often that the sunroof-removal process is routine.
It works. Balanced painfully on his stomach, blood rushing to his head, legs ridiculously in the air, he grabs the keys, exits, and unlocks the door with the key. As he sits down to start the car, he has to look up and meet the eyes of the diners who have watched this. No one looks up from their food.
Three decades back I locked the keys to the grownup baby car in it at the hospital where I’d taken my infant daughter for a round of vaccinations. It was getting hot—and she was cranky from the shots. Thankfully, her grandmother worked there, so I toted all the paraphernalia back in & up, conscripted grandma, then went back to deal with the Tahoe. They didn’t have any wire hangers, and suggested I try a cop. Flagged down an office, but he said they were no longer allowed to open locked cars due to liability.
parked next to another phase of construction, I snuck in & snagged some heavy wire. Some two hours after I discovered I had sequestered the keys, I heard the triumphant ‘shnuck’. Drove my daughter home with my sunburnt red neck starting to pain me. Been pretty damn careful about keeping track of keys since.
nightime in the rain next to a major interstate? Nah, bugger that for a lark!
I once locked my keys in my running Beretta with an overheating problem. 45 minutes from home (and spare set). I stopped to top up the coolant on the side of the road and somehow bumped the lock button while getting out. Breeze blew the door slightly closed, just enough to latch. I had to call a tow truck to break into it. He just looked for the cloud of steam/coolant to locate me….
One of my colleagues drove to Changi airport, his wife took over the wheel and he flew to Europe with the fob in his jacket leaving the car bricked when his wife next shut off the engine. But being bricked at a shopping mall in Singapore is a wholly different kettle of fish to a rainy night on a highway in Maryland. I’m glad you’re safe – it’s amazing what our brains can do to deal with a focused survival issue but that often fails to consider the broader safety context.
Thank goodness all ended well, at least relatively speaking!! Yeah, it wasn’t a bone-headed mistake so much as it was just what’s actually pretty much a garden-variety brain cramp for a moment, with putting the fob on the cowling, and it was just exponentially compounded by the flaws of the programming for the fob with the truck bricking itself as soon as it was put into Park even though you didn’t even touch the ignition or anything. Hopefully Ford (& other manufacturers!) will take note and adjust their fob programming accordingly.
Reminded of some reports in the VW community (like on VWVortex) about how the VW Transporter T5 van (not sold here in the U.S. or Canada) had an odd and extremely uncommon issue in the early ’00s where if somebody locked all the doors but then used the physical key to unlock the rear doors, climbed in, and shut the door (like if one was retrieving a forgotten tool when it was raining) and accidentally pressed the lock button on the key fob the person would find themselves locked in and not able to open any of the doors regardless of whether they used the physical door locks & handles or used the key fob; they would have to roll down a window and use the physical key to unlock the door from outside. Yeah, woe to those in such a situation with cargo versions that had just two power windows that had stopped working or to those who had the sole keyed door handle broken which was a common problem for VW in that era. Such situations happened very rarely but it was still enough to get VW to rectify the issue on later T5s.
Anyhow, what a harrowing ordeal for you to endure!! So it’s good that you emerged at least relatively unscathed and still possessing all your limbs & life even if you might wonder whether you retained your complete sanity…
I feel your pain! I was the lead for a 2 day bike ride one year with over 500 riders. We had multiple large box trucks to supply the 10 or so aid stations. On day 2 the route was going to allow us to use one 26′ box truck to supply 4 or 5 aid stations in one trip. Spent hours packing it up the evening before with all the supplies. Woke up at 5am to send it out on its deliveries and the keys were nowhere to be found! I searched as long as I could but eventually had to give in and unpack the entire truck, pack 3 smaller trucks with the new loads, create new maps, etc. and send them out just in time for the riders.
We got the keys back later that day… I had left them in our “command trailer” which I suppose made sense. But we had borrowed the trailer from the local fire department and they came and picked it up in the middle of the night for a big fire. Ooops! Never a dull moment!
Wow, what an ordeal. That makes me glad that all my cars still need physical keys. I know what it is like to look for a key too.
When the weather is nice I ride my bike to work. Last year, I lost the lock key and my house key on the ride home. I foolishly left the key in the lock that dangles off the handlebars. Retracing my steps, I went back to work and back home again in the daylight and wasn’t able to find it.
I can’t imagine to be looking for a fob on a highway, at night and in the rain… that’s seems like an impossibility but I know the feeling of desperation and hopefulness that just maybe it will be right there.
Fortunately for me, I kept an extra bike lock key in my toolbox and just needed to wait for my wife to get home to unlock the apartment door.
Tesla solved this problem already. We don’t need keys anymore. Your phone and a credit card size backup key is all you need. Car locks/unlocks when you get a certain distance away. Better yet, put a little finger print reader in the infotainment screen for emergencies.
LOL Tesla invented the backup key? I have had one hanging from a piece of wire under my car since… the 90s?
Oh, if you’re referring to the “credit card size backup key” as the invention. GM had that back in the 70s
General Motors Emergency Credit Card Keys 1967, 71, 75, 79, 83-86 Nos Rare | eBay
Thats….cool? Do either of those examples lock or unlock your car when you’re a certain distance away from it? I am by no means a tesla-stan, it was simply the only car I can think of that locks and unlocks via your proximity to the car.
Sorry. Based on the article I thought you were referring to the backup situation when you lose the original “key” (key, fob, phone, whatever is needed to operate the car).
My Wife’s bolt unlocks as you get close to the car. My Dad’s Silverado as well. But I think Tesla pre-dated those implementations. MB did it in the late 90s S-Class. I think they were the first.
My wife’s Toyota unlocks when you go to open the door and the fob is close enough. I was a bit worried about how close the fob had to be for this to work as the key hanger spot is about 20 feet away from the car in the house (yes we have a dedicated place to hang our keys). It is not close enough to allow entry into the car. I don’t need my car to unlock just because I am nearby but I don’t mind if I am near enough that it unlocks when I go to open the door.
Yikes, Mercedes. I’m so glad you’re okay!
I thank my lucky stars I always have pockets for my car key. I have heard the sound of something parting company with a vehicle, and had to chase a sleeping bag dow the Pennsylvania Turnpike when it fell off my motorcycle.
This and the preceding article remind me we need a second key and fob for the Fiat pronto
If you’ve never felt that heart-sinking-to-your-feet combination of fear, depression, and “oh my God how could I have done something this dumb?”. then you’re not a full-on human being.
I thought Fords give you 10 seconds to restart the car if you turn it off with no key detected. Like, you dropped your spouse at work and they have the key. It should never brick itself in that situation. Obviously Ford must have done away with that feature.
Let’s hope they see this and change it back, that is hopefully the point of testers.
Unless that ‘feature’ is in the specs and is operating according to specification.
It’s even *worse* than that because Mercedes only put the truck in park. She knew the key was gone at this point and intentionally would not have touched the ignition. The truck shut *itself* down and trapped her in a dangerous situation.
Yet another example of how technology that usually makes our lives better can sometimes make it much worse. This could not have happened in an older truck with a basic key ignition.
Plus, no car should ever brick itself for auto theft prevention to the point that you can’t close the windows and sunroof.
In my case, I was busy running around the truck looking for the fob, so it had been shut down for a while by the time I got back to the driver seat.
I also didn’t turn it off myself, either. I tried to leave it running because I knew it wasn’t going to start again. But I suppose the security system had its own ideas.