cmt489
Contributor
mars2u:
Actually that is any Mercedes (or any other car for that matter) with a keyless go. My parents have this feature on their car and it is quite slick!
Locked your keys in the car-have a cell phone no problem
- Thread starter cdiver2
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Actually that is any Mercedes (or any other car for that matter) with a keyless go. My parents have this feature on their car and it is quite slick!
love2godeep
Contributor
For those who didn't click on MtnDiver's link, here's the full text:
A familiar form of jape applied especially to newcomers in a social group is something known as a "fool's errand": a prank in which the victim is lured into attempting to complete a ridiculous task that to the uninitiated sounds just plausible enough to be valid. Quests to find non-existent objects are a common form of fool's errand when I was in the Boy Scouts, tenderfeet on their first campouts were typically sent off to borrow a "bacon stretcher" (an implement supposedly used to prevent one's breakfast meat from curling up in the frying pan) or a "left-handed smoke-shifter" (a device reportedly employed to prevent campfire smoke from drifting into one's tent). All the other scouts were, of course, in on the gag (having been through the same process themselves) and would merrily send the hapless tenderfoot from one location to the next in quest of something he could never find. Likewise, an innocent new employee at an airfield or dockyard might be asked to retrieve "a bucket of prop wash" or "50 feet of shoreline."
The message quoted above might be considered a type of fool's errand, a joke created to see how many people are gullible enough to call friends and try opening their car doors with cell phones.
Many new cars now come equipped with "Remote Keyless Entry" (or "Keyless Remote" or "Keyless Entry" or "Remote Entry") systems (also known as RKE systems), a mechanism which allows automobile owners to lock and unlock their car doors remotely (from up to about 300 feet away) by pressing buttons on transmitting devices small enough to be carried on keychains. RKE systems are handy for a number of reasons: they enable drivers to unlock car doors without having to fumble around for keys (a great advantage in darkness, during inclement weather, and when one's hands are full), they enable car owners to give someone else access to their vehicles without having to hand over ignition keys, and they provide a means by which motorists can open their cars to retrieve keys that have been locked inside.
But what if you accidentally lock your remote entry device in your car along with your keys? (A plausible scenario, as many people carry them together on the same keyring.) If you own a car equipped with a system such as OnStar you can contact an operator and have OnStar unlock your vehicle remotely through a signal sent via a cellular network, but otherwise you have to call a locksmith or get a friend or relative to bring an extra set of keys out to you.
Enter the idea of the poor man's OnStar. No need to pay for a fancy car-unlocking service: just use a cell phone to call someone who has access to your spare RKE device and tell him to point it at the phone and press the "UNLOCK" button. You simultaneously point the cell phone at your car door, and voilà you're in! A nifty solution . . . at least it would be if it weren't completely implausible, the equivalent of a fool's errand for our modern technological age.
Relaying remote entry system signals via telephone might work if the signals were sound-based, but they're not. An RKE system transmits an encrypted data stream to a receiver inside the automobile via an RF (radio frequency) signal, a signal that can't be effectively relayed via cell phone. (In any event, RKE systems and cell phones typically operate on completely different frequencies; the former in the 300 MHz range and the latter in the 800 MHz range.)
We don't know whether whoever created this message was deliberately joking or earnestly mistaken, but the vision of stranded motorists vainly holding cell phones up to their cars in the hopes of unlocking them is an amusing one. One might as well suggest that a spare piano key could be used to gain entry to a locked automobile.
(More than a few people have inadvertently fooled themselves into believing the cell phone method of unlocking car doors actually works because they tried it and achieved the desired results not realizing their cars were still within range of their keyless remote devices, and the signals that unlocked the doors were transmitted the usual way [i.e., through the air], not via cellular phone connections.)
As a recent purchaser of a new vehicle equipped with an RKE system, I've found that it has reduced the likelihood of my locking my keys in the car in an unexpected way: Since I quickly became accustomed to always locking and unlocking the car with the RKE device, and I carry the RKE device on the same ring as my keys, I have to be standing outside the vehicle with my keys in my hand in order to lock it. Now if I only had something to keep me from losing my cell phone . . .
url: http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/keyless.asp
A familiar form of jape applied especially to newcomers in a social group is something known as a "fool's errand": a prank in which the victim is lured into attempting to complete a ridiculous task that to the uninitiated sounds just plausible enough to be valid. Quests to find non-existent objects are a common form of fool's errand when I was in the Boy Scouts, tenderfeet on their first campouts were typically sent off to borrow a "bacon stretcher" (an implement supposedly used to prevent one's breakfast meat from curling up in the frying pan) or a "left-handed smoke-shifter" (a device reportedly employed to prevent campfire smoke from drifting into one's tent). All the other scouts were, of course, in on the gag (having been through the same process themselves) and would merrily send the hapless tenderfoot from one location to the next in quest of something he could never find. Likewise, an innocent new employee at an airfield or dockyard might be asked to retrieve "a bucket of prop wash" or "50 feet of shoreline."
The message quoted above might be considered a type of fool's errand, a joke created to see how many people are gullible enough to call friends and try opening their car doors with cell phones.
Many new cars now come equipped with "Remote Keyless Entry" (or "Keyless Remote" or "Keyless Entry" or "Remote Entry") systems (also known as RKE systems), a mechanism which allows automobile owners to lock and unlock their car doors remotely (from up to about 300 feet away) by pressing buttons on transmitting devices small enough to be carried on keychains. RKE systems are handy for a number of reasons: they enable drivers to unlock car doors without having to fumble around for keys (a great advantage in darkness, during inclement weather, and when one's hands are full), they enable car owners to give someone else access to their vehicles without having to hand over ignition keys, and they provide a means by which motorists can open their cars to retrieve keys that have been locked inside.
But what if you accidentally lock your remote entry device in your car along with your keys? (A plausible scenario, as many people carry them together on the same keyring.) If you own a car equipped with a system such as OnStar you can contact an operator and have OnStar unlock your vehicle remotely through a signal sent via a cellular network, but otherwise you have to call a locksmith or get a friend or relative to bring an extra set of keys out to you.
Enter the idea of the poor man's OnStar. No need to pay for a fancy car-unlocking service: just use a cell phone to call someone who has access to your spare RKE device and tell him to point it at the phone and press the "UNLOCK" button. You simultaneously point the cell phone at your car door, and voilà you're in! A nifty solution . . . at least it would be if it weren't completely implausible, the equivalent of a fool's errand for our modern technological age.
Relaying remote entry system signals via telephone might work if the signals were sound-based, but they're not. An RKE system transmits an encrypted data stream to a receiver inside the automobile via an RF (radio frequency) signal, a signal that can't be effectively relayed via cell phone. (In any event, RKE systems and cell phones typically operate on completely different frequencies; the former in the 300 MHz range and the latter in the 800 MHz range.)
We don't know whether whoever created this message was deliberately joking or earnestly mistaken, but the vision of stranded motorists vainly holding cell phones up to their cars in the hopes of unlocking them is an amusing one. One might as well suggest that a spare piano key could be used to gain entry to a locked automobile.
(More than a few people have inadvertently fooled themselves into believing the cell phone method of unlocking car doors actually works because they tried it and achieved the desired results not realizing their cars were still within range of their keyless remote devices, and the signals that unlocked the doors were transmitted the usual way [i.e., through the air], not via cellular phone connections.)
As a recent purchaser of a new vehicle equipped with an RKE system, I've found that it has reduced the likelihood of my locking my keys in the car in an unexpected way: Since I quickly became accustomed to always locking and unlocking the car with the RKE device, and I carry the RKE device on the same ring as my keys, I have to be standing outside the vehicle with my keys in my hand in order to lock it. Now if I only had something to keep me from losing my cell phone . . .
url: http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/keyless.asp
ShakaZulu
Contributor
Someone had to ruin the party............nice
Gidds
Contributor
cdiver2:
Some of us still have cars that are sensible and don't make all kinds of electronic noises and require a REAL key, you know the kind that is safe to put in your wetsuit key pocket while diving? AAA always comes and deals with my stupid car in 15 minutes, usually while I sit inside where it's warm
RonDawg
Contributor
cmt489:Better yet, buy European so that it is virtually impossible to lock your keys in the car (unless you lock them in the trunk!
A local VW dealer (thankfully now out of business) did just that with the keys to my mother's car
cdiver2:
I think your integrity is now in question, unless of course you were butt of someone else's prank...in which case your friend's integrity is now in question.....
Ummm... what's a keyless remote? For that matter what's a cell phone. Oh, and while you're at it... what's a car? Don't use one here on Catalina and the one on the mainland responds well to slim jims.
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