Keyless car entry failure: concerns after reports woman locked in own Audi vehicle

Updated

Concerns have been raised about the downsides of advances in car technology after a Queensland woman faced the terrifying situation of being locked and trapped inside her own car.

Fairfax newspapers are reporting that the woman's keyless-entry car malfunctioned in some way, leaving her trapped and struggling to breathe on a 40 degrees Celsius day.

The ABC understands Audi is monitoring the incident, which happened in Noosa on the state's Sunshine Coast.

Motoring journalist Toby Hagon from drive.com.au has told The World Today incidents like that could happen more, as cars increasingly rely on computer technology.

"Pretty much all modern cars have a deadlocking system that's all designed to keep the thieves out," he said.

"But unfortunately sometimes it keeps the good guys in, particularly if you have an electrical gremlin or a power failure or something like that."

Hagon says he found himself locked inside a Porsche he was test-driving in Sydney in 2010.

"I just went out shopping one day with my family. Parked, went out to a shop, came back, got in the car and it wouldn't start," he said.

"So I was trying to lock the car and unlock the car. All of a sudden it locked but it wouldn't unlock, so I was stuck in the car. Ended up being stuck in there for about 45 minutes."

He was trapped inside with his wife and newborn baby.

"The car had a service line associated with it so we called that. Once the guy found out we were stuck in a car with a kid he called the police," he said.

"He beat the police, when he got there he tried for a minute or two to open it.

"By that stage my wife was getting a bit sick of sitting in the car and started to panic, so he offered to smash the window, which we accepted. So the window got smashed and we climbed out."

Porsche technicians later blamed electronic interference for blocking signals from the car's wireless smart key.

Fears issue could 'potentially kill someone'

Hagon says the deadlocking issue could be dangerous, especially on hot days.

"If you're stuck in the car on a hot day it can be extremely dangerous if it's a darker coloured car, particularly with kids," he said.

"They're not going to cope too well and it wouldn't take long at all until it's at the point of potentially killing someone."

If you're stuck in the car on a hot day it can be extremely dangerous ... it wouldn't take long at all until it's at the point of potentially killing someone. Toby Hagon

Australian Road Safety Foundation chief Russell White says people do not see stationary vehicles as threats.

"The thing is with technology we get so used to it working perfectly that when it doesn't it can put us on the back foot a little bit," he said.

"I think it's something we need to look more at rigorous testing to make sure that other signals don't interfere with keyless entries.

"And obviously also having some sort or emergency exit switch or a lever that someone could pull if they were trapped inside a car would probably be a way that you could potentially get around something like that."

But Tim Moggeridge from the NRMA says his organisation is not too worried.

"Technology is sort of getting away a little bit but you know we have to be on top of our game," he said.

"We introduced new tooling and certainly the training that we provide our staff is of the highest quality and there's not too many vehicles that our patrols can't get into."

Topics: accidents---other, accidents, disasters-and-accidents, road-transport, science-and-technology, noosa-heads-4567, qld, australia

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