Locked Out: Advice on Calling a Locksmith

If you ever get locked out of your car, you might be tempted to try to break into it, instead of calling a locksmith. Here are two reasons why this is not a good idea.

It could put you in a very embarrassing situation

Attempting to break into your own vehicle could lead to you being involved in a very embarrassing situation.

The reason for this is as follows; if someone driving or walking by sees you trying to smash one of the car's windows or using a tool to unlock one of the doors, they might assume that you are a thief who is trying to steal someone else's vehicle.

If they then decide to contact the authorities, you may have to explain your predicament to the police. This could be both stressful and very humiliating.

If you do not have any identification or paperwork on your person that proves that the vehicle is yours, you may have to endure a long and embarrassing wait whilst the police attempt to verify that you are the owner of the car.

You could inflict major damage on your car

Breaking into a car requires a great deal of physical force. As such, if you decide to take this approach, you could end up doing major damage to your vehicle that could be very expensive to repair.

For example, if you decide to strike the window with a heavy object in order to shatter it, you would have to incur the cost of purchasing a replacement window as well as the cost of paying a mechanic to install it.

In this situation, the shards of broken glass that land on the car seats could also end up tearing the upholstery. If this should happen, you may then have to replace this fabric too.

Likewise, if you try to break open one of the car doors by slipping a crowbar in between the door and the window frame, you could damage one or more of the door's internal components (such as the pull handle's brackets or the actuator cables that allow you to remotely lock and unlock the doors).

Furthermore, if like most modern vehicles, yours has a transponder key system, and the key is locked inside the vehicle, the airborne, sharp pieces of glass, or the heavy object that you used to break the window could land on the key and break the fragile chip inside it.

Automotive transponder keys are designed to disable a car's engine immobiliser; as such, if you accidentally damage the key whilst trying to gain access to it, you will be unable to drive your vehicle. In this scenario, you would not only have to call a locksmith to replace or repair the key but would also have to have any damage you caused to the rest of your car fixed as well.