Keys Locked in the Car? A Macarthur Driver Opens It Without a Scratch

Everyone has seen a coat hanger used on a car door, and everyone has seen the scratched paint and the torn seal that came with it. That is not how a lockout is done. The tools are made for the job, and the method is about patience rather than force.

The wedge goes in at the top rear corner of the front door, where the frame is stiffest and the seal most forgiving. It is inflated or tapped just enough to open a gap the width of a finger. The long-reach tool, a thin coated rod with a bent tip, goes through the gap and reaches the unlock switch on the door panel, the interior handle, or the lock post, depending on the car. One press, the door unlocks, the tool and wedge come out, and the driver runs a finger along the seal to confirm it seated. On cars with frameless windows, the driver works at the glass instead of the frame; on cars with a manual lock post, he lifts it directly. The car lockouts call is one of the quickest jobs a Macarthur truck does, and it is quick because it is done the same careful way every time.

Keyless cars have added a new kind of lockout. The car reads the fob through a short-range signal, and when it cannot read it, because the fob's coin battery is flat or it is shielded inside a metal bag or under a seat, the car assumes the fob is outside and locks. The owner is standing there with no way in and a fob that may as well be on the moon.

The lockout itself is no different: wedge, tool, unlock. What differs is what happens afterward. If the fob battery is dead, the car will still start, because every push-button car has a backup: hold the fob against the start button, or drop it into a slot in the console or cupholder, and the car reads it by a short-range chip that needs no battery. The driver knows where that is on common models and shows you. A new coin battery from a pharmacy fixes it for good. If you locked the fob in the car with a second fob in your pocket, the car simply thought the second one was leaving. Open the door, retrieve the first fob, and put one of them somewhere it will not get locked in again. The roadside assistance page covers the other small problems that often travel with a lockout, like a battery that died while the car sat.

This happens more than anyone likes to admit: a toddler presses the lock button while a parent loads the trunk, a dog steps on the fob, a car auto-locks with a baby in the back seat. The temperature inside a closed car climbs fast in summer and drops fast in winter, and a tow truck is not an emergency vehicle.

Call 911. Stay at the car and keep the child or animal calm through the glass. If the situation is becoming dangerous and help is not there, breaking a window far from the child is the right call; a window is cheap. Once the car is open and everyone is safe, call 516-362-5350 if you still need help: keys are still inside, a window is broken and the car needs to go to our body shop for glass, or the car needs to be moved. We will come. We just should not be the first call.

A locked-out contractor's van at seven in the morning is a crew standing around. The cab opens the same way a car does. Cargo doors with aftermarket deadbolts or slam locks are a different matter; if the keys are locked in the cargo area and the cab does not connect to it, the driver tells you honestly whether the rear can be opened without damage or whether a locksmith is the answer for that lock.

Fleet managers and repair shops with standing accounts get one number and one contact for lockouts, jump starts, and tows. The commercial accounts section on the towing page explains how those are set up. Dealers use the same service for cars locked on the lot with the keys inside.

From the yard on the Nassau–Queens line, the trucks are closest to the south shore and southeastern Queens: Valley Stream, Lynbrook, Elmont, Franklin Square, West Hempstead, Hempstead, Malverne, Rockville Centre, Oceanside, Baldwin, Freeport, Long Beach, Cedarhurst, Lawrence, Woodmere, and Hewlett, and across the line in Laurelton, Rosedale, Springfield Gardens, Cambria Heights, St. Albans, Queens Village, Jamaica, and Far Rockaway.

The same trucks cover central and eastern Nassau, Garden City, New Hyde Park, Mineola, Westbury, Uniondale, East Meadow, Levittown, Hicksville, Plainview, Merrick, Wantagh, and Massapequa, the north shore from Great Neck and Manhasset to Glen Cove and Oyster Bay, and the Suffolk border towns of Amityville, Melville, and Huntington. Every town on the locations page has a lockout page. If yours is not listed, call anyway.