Fluff: Do you ALWAYS lock your car doors?

The only time I don’t lock my car is when it is in the garage. And I don’t leave anything valuable in the car, like purses or laptops, even if the car is in the garage. I grew up in LA and we parked outside, so it is ingrained in me from a young age to always lock the doors and not to leave anything in it.

I think I’m like you. Always have locked it unless in the garage. Getting gas I’m right there but most times I lock it even when returning a cart.

Unless it is in the garage, yes. When pumping gas, I'll sometimes put my purse in the seatbelt and lock all of the doors but my driver's door. Ain't no one getting my credit card.

Well, that's not true. A guy got my card last month (probably online) and used $1317 for travel and flowers.

We live in bear country and I am always fascinated by people who share their Ring videos from around our neighborhood of all of the bears (during the night and day).  I don't get why people don't lock them.  Bears destroy your vehicle.

I wasn’t, but recently there were several car thefts in my county and there are signs up all over telling us to lock our cars. 

At home I never intentionally leave my car unlocked, but sometimes I forget or it just doesn't lock when I click the button (car in driveway). Same thing when I'm away from home, but I am better about not forgetting.

This is a big joke at my dad and stepmom's house because they live in a small town and never lock anything (cars or their house). They usually leave the keys in their cars too. They like to make fun of those of us who lock vehicles when visiting, but it's mostly in jest (plus it's not like it's going to make us change our habits...)

my doors autolock when i put the car in drive.  if i'm going to sit in my car, i always lock it right away.

nope, not always...  if I don't leave anything of value in the car, I don't lock the doors.  Probably not the best idea, but that's what I've always done.  I don't lock it when I'm at work, either...  typically I leave a couple windows cracked a little bit, too, so if someone wanted to bad enough they could probably get into it anyway.  (when it's really hot, I always crack the windows... ever since one day when there was a small crack in the windshield, and because the temperature got so hot inside the car, by lunchtime the crack was all the way from one side of the windshield to the other.)

eta:  never lock it when it's inside the garage.  Every once in a while my DH will accidentally hit the clicker for MY car instead of his, and it's sort of like a Keystone Cops episode when I try to open the door handle and it's unexpectedly locked, lol. 

I have always automatically locked my car when I get out of it - so automatically that when I was once driving with a mechanic who was trying to understand the problem I was describing and pulled over to switch seats so he could drive, I locked the door as I got out. Luckily he hadn’t locked the other side (long ago before key fobs and modern systems that wouldn’t let you lock the car with keys in it).

My area has had a ton of reports of stolen cars and cars ransacked for anything valuable. And just last week, at around 2 pm in the afternoon, two guys got into a car and then into a house through the open garage on the court just off my street. Other neighbors saw them, and when the guys left there and came over to my house - where I had left the garage door open when I came in with my brother who was parked in my driveway - they left when they realized the neighbor was coming over. Now, generally I close the garage door, but I didn’t that day. And my brother always locks his car when he visits, but that day he unlocked it to put some papers in it that I had given him, and didn’t relock it.

I never keep my purse or anything valuable in my car when it’s in the garage, but this was a close call. And I have a key pad on the door from garage to house, and the door automatically locks when closed. But these guys could have walked right into the house if I hadn’t had that lock. And if Tim hadn’t seen them checking out my brother's car and coming into my garage, they might have had time to do more than just look.

The experience last week has put the whole neighborhood on alert. And even more so since I found out that a friend and her son, who live literally about a minute or two west of me both had their cars stolen later that same day. AND, my nephew told me about someone he knows who went back home to get a birthday gift she’d forgotten - shut off the car in the garage, but left the keys in the cup holder while she ran inside, opened the door to go back into the garage and one guy was on the step right in front of her - he punched her in the face and they (there were two guys) stole her car. Got it back within 12 hours, but a new car with around 400 miles on it had almost $20K in damages.

It doesn’t take long for someone to steal a car, open a door and get into a house, etc. I am being extra careful about not leaving the garage door open if I’m in the backyard and have even locked my car when it’s in the garage, something I haven’t typically done. I’m very glad to have the keypad on the inside door, but I also realized that that doesn’t guarantee someone won’t be on the outside when I open it if the garage door is open.

It is not locked if in the garage because in the summer I leave the windows down due to the heat. Everywhere else it is locked.

I don’t lock it if it’s parked inside my locked garage. If the car is parked outside anywhere ever, it is locked. I also never leave anything of any value in it that would be visible to anyone passing by.

I learned that lesson the hard way years ago. DH left the empty box from a $10 car speaker that he’d put in laying in the back seat floorboard of my ancient station wagon. I didn’t realize the box was sitting there until I got to the park and ride where I parked for the city bus I took to work. It was too big to flatten and take with me and there was no trash receptacle in the area where I could throw it away or recycle it. When I got back to my car that evening someone had smashed out the back seat window to investigate, and then they didn’t even take the stupid piece of crap speaker! 

The worst part was the very back window near where the speaker was connected didn’t even lock. They could have stolen the speaker without breaking any windows. They wouldn’t have even needed a screwdriver because the speaker wasn’t mounted to anything. 🤬 It cost us $400 to fix the window which was probably more than the car was worth.

Unless the cart return is within a spot or two of where I'm at, I always lock it for that as well.

Always, always except when I'm pumping gas, because I'm at Costco.

My old neighborhood got hit twice by people breaking in to unlocked cars in driveways. A few of them had garage door openers in the cars, which made things worse. One of those homes had the door between the garage and house unlocked, and the thieves got into the house WHILE the home owners were there - thankfully they were safe, but it was super scary for them.

I've grown up locking my car doors. My new car automatically locks when I get 5 feet away from it with my keys in my hand, and when I go to the car, only the driver's side unlocks automatically, unless I walk up to the passenger door with my keys in my hand.