[toast0]

Where I live, some people don't lock their car doors, and some people leave the keys in their car...

But I don't understand what closing the windows all the way vs leaving them open a crack does for security? Are car windows that much more secure when fully closed? When I'm in sketchy neighborhoods, I expect people to be walking around with slim jims or breaking windows anyway, so a crack doesn't seem like a big deal?

[djaychela]

If the window is cracked open, you can usually get a tool in that will allow you to unlock the car from the inside, as you would if you were inside the car. You can then get in without any noise.

Source: I used to hang out with people who knew car thieves when I was much younger (very early 90s). I knew the area's worst car thief by name, and he would tell you how skilled he was at any opportunity. He always had a thin piece of metal with a hooked end on him (fitted down his jacket arm) for this purpose.

[blincoln]

The window doesn't need to be cracked open to use a "slim jim", at least on older vehicles.

I once accidentally locked myself out of the 2000 Honda Civic I used to own. The engine was still running, and I didn't want it to run out of gas or be late to work. I popped the driver's side door window trim off so I could see how the mechanism worked, and then improvised a "slim jim" out of some wire from my fence. It was disappointingly easy.

[XorNot]

I mean you can also just the break the window, which is what happened to my rental in Hawaii so someone could steal the empty backpack inside. $350 I could've saved had I just left the windows open.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

A friend of ours drove her mother's car here and accidentally locked the keys inside. Made a call to the local police station and a deputy showed up and opened the car in less than a minute.

[ferongr]

This isn't true for any modern car. Even my 2006 VAG shitbox has a double locking feature, where locking the doors from the outside disables the handles on the interior and the unlock switches.

[hotpotamus]

What? Do they double as prisoner transport vehicles? I'd keep one of those safety hammers in my car if it had such a system.

[ferongr]

It's a pretty standard feature here in Europe. In any case, if you've locked the doors from the outside, there should be no reason for the internal handles or unlock switches to be operational.

[toast0]

I guess Europeans never stop in at a store real quick while someone is in the car, and lock the doors while in the store?

Really, disabling the inside handles when there could be a person inside the car sounds like a deathtrap.

[ferongr]

Don't leave a person in the car.

[hotpotamus]

What if there's someone in the car?

[ferongr]

Don't leave a person in the car.

[Gordonjcp]

When I lived in a particularly sketchy part of Glasgow about 20 years ago, I lost the keys for my car. It was an old but quite nice (and fast) Citroën CX, so I was a bit worried that I'd dropped them somewhere and someone would use them to steal the car.

I'd been running around in my work van for a week or so, before - by chance - I parked up beside the Citroën, where I saw the keys hanging from the driver's door.

They'd been hanging in the door all week. No-one had touched it.

[tshaddox]

Yeah, I don’t get why leaving your car windows cracked is supposed to be indicative. I’ve done that even in parts of the Bay Area that are infamous for smash and grabs. They’ll either break your window and be gone 3 seconds later, or they won’t. The cracked window won’t change anything.

[vachina]

Some cracks are big enough for whole hands to get inside to grab the door handle or valuables.

[lamontcg]

> But I don't understand what closing the windows all the way vs leaving them open a crack does for security?

Because security is about having slightly higher security than the other person.

It is a game of "you don't have to outrun the bear / swim faster than the shark, you just have to be faster than the other person".

And open car window lets someone easily get in without breaking the glass and attracting attention and the cracked open window may give them the idea to try it in the first place.

The locks on your door are also nearly useless against someone with any lock picking skill at all, and your windows can probably be easily broken, but thieves are more likely to come in through an unlocked door or open window.

And these days with immobilizers, the cars that have them aren't often being stolen by hacking the CANbus, they're being stolen because people leave them idling in the driveway with the fob inside the car and the thief just hops in and drives off--possibly with the kid in the backseat.

If you lock your doors, roll your windows up and don't leave your keys in the car you will have left problems with theft and burglary. You won't eliminate it, but that doesn't mean those precautions don't work at all. Security isn't a binary either-or where you either have perfect security or none at all.

[toast0]

> Because security is about having slightly higher security than the other person.

I get that, but I just don't see the security disadvantage of having a 1 cm gap between the top of the glass and the bottom of the window frame; that's what I'm asking about.

[lamontcg]

> And open car window lets someone easily get in without breaking the glass and attracting attention and the cracked open window may give them the idea to try it in the first place.

[brokenmachine]

If the car's locked with the window a bit down, they can't use the handle to get in.

They'd still need to break the glass.