Same key, not my truck!

[Steve Eure]

How often does this happen? It has happened in our town twice that I know of. It happened to my wife today while we were at one of the borg's. She came out of the store before me and went up to a similar looking black F150 that was parked across the isle from my truck. She hit the unlock button, it clicked and she open the door and got in. She did not crank the truck so we don't know if it would have. She realized her mistake, looked around and saw our's behind her. She was slightly embarrassed.
On the other time, a woman came out of a store and clicked her remote on a truck that looked identical to hers, it opened, she climbed in and started it up, then drove home, not realizing it was not her vehicle. She did not know anything was wrong until the police called her. They (the other vehicle owner), saw her truck and used her plates to have the cops locate her. This story made the front page of the papers.
I wonder how many other instances this has occurred. Mighty strange that it happened in the same town.

[glenn bradley]

Dad tells the story of an attendee at one of his lectures returning home by air, jumping in his wife's car which is what he drove to the airport, driving home and not realizing anything was amiss until his wife asked "where did you get that car?". This was back in the 70's and dad's stories get a little "pliable" as he rolls toward 100 so, grain of salt.

[Peter Mich]

While vacationing in Hawaii we left a restaurant, jumped into ‘our’ rental car and drove off. A few miles down the road we realized we didn’t recognize the personal items in the car. Made a quick u-turn to find our rental still parked (fortunately) right where we parked it near the restaurant. We swapped cars, left and wondered what the other vacationers thought when they discovered their car in a slightly different location. We decided to avoid leaving valuables in rental cars in the future when spending time in popular vacation spots.

[Bruce Wrenn]

As a kid, neighbor had a 57 Ford pickup. The keys from my sister's 62 Ford Fairlane worked better in his truck than his original key, both doors and ignition keys. It always makes you feel good when you hit the lock button on your remote and another vehicle's horn toots at you.

[Ed Aumiller]

We have an old plymouth that my daughter drives on our private road... I had the key in my pocket and came home and she was driving it...
Asked her where she got a key and she said it was hanging in the garage... Turns out that my brothers dodge pickup was the key she was using !!!
Worked fine... both ways.. plymouth key worked in his dodge...

[Alex Zeller]

Does your F150 have a chip in the key? I would like to think that with a chip even if the key would work in the ignition it wouldn't start.

I've heard of a slightly different thing happening. Someone pushing their unlock button on the fob and hearing the noise and thinking it's their vehicle (since it's the same model/ color) only to find out that their vehicle was right next to it. The beep they heard was from their vehicle and just got into an unlocked vehicle near it. How often do you really pay attention to the lights flashing?

[Mel Fulks]

I have heard of that. In 1970s new car dealers had keys that would open lots of cars. I can’t remember the exact circumstances, but when
you have “master keys” then obviously there are not a great number of designs. I don’t know if the system has had any improvements since
then.

[Lee Schierer]

When I was in the Navy, a friend related a situation he found himself in back in the 70's . He owned a blue Chevy Nova with a white vinyl roof. He decided to go to a baseball game so he parked his car in a large parking lot at the ballpark. The game wasn't over and he needed to go home to get ready for work. He went out in the parking lot, walked down the row of cars where he parked, took out his keys and unlocked the door to his car. The key worked perfectly. He was driving down the road and decided to have a cigarette, so he reached over and opened the glove box. There were a bunch of 8-track tapes in there. He thought, why are there 8-track tapes, I don't have an 8-track tape player. He looked down and there was a 8-track player on the console. He realized that he wasn't in his car, so he carefully returned to the parking lot, parked the car where it had been. He walked a few more cars down the row and there was his car.

Back in that time frame when there were keys, there was a finite number of tumbler combinations that could be made in the locks. Manufacturers would make cars with identical locks and then ship them to different parts of the country. Since he had purchased his car at a previous duty station in another part of the country and then relocated he had inadvertently stumbled onto an identically keyed car.

[Roger Feeley]

When I was in high school there were some epic pranks. Once a bunch of kids got together and removed all the tags from the cars in the teachers lot. Then they mixed them up and reattached, keeping one. I should mention that this was in the days before surveillance cameras. Eventually, the car with no tag was pulled over. The call was put out for the tag and that car was pulled over and so on until they figured it out. There was a mass resorting of tags and the one that had been kept mysteriously reappeared.

Probably the best prank was when the metal shop guys cast a lovely plaque that the mounted on the cafeteria wall. It dedicated the school cafeteria to the Donner party. They did such a nice job that no one in authority noticed for three months.

[George Yetka]

When I was a teenager Had a jeep cherokee sport in navy like everyone else. I came out of store unlocked and got in. I remember seat felt weird and mirrors were off adjusted the rear view and noticed baby seat in the back.

[Jim Koepke]

Back in that time frame when there were keys, there was a finite number of tumbler combinations that could be made in the locks.

Not sure about the current status of this but a few years ago one major maker of heavy construction equipment caught a little heat for using the same key set in every piece of equipment they made.

jtk

[Andrew Seemann]

In the 90s, I unlocked and got into the wife's Wild Strawberry Metallic '91 Escort at some store parking lot and was about to drive off, but I wondered when she got the roller blades in the passenger seat (she isn't the athletic type), and slowly realized that it wasn't our car.

The amusing thing is how your mind keeps refusing to accept that you are in the wrong place, rather that jumping to the obvious "this isn't mine" conclusion. I did that in the dorms in college once. I got off the elevator on the wrong floor (had a lot on my mind that day) and walked into "my" room and immediately started thinking that our loft had been stolen along with the majority of our stuff, and who did I need to call to report this, etc. It took a good minute or two to realize that I was on the wrong floor.

Growing up, the keys to our 1980 Aspen were the same as our 1982 Dodge pickup, which worked out to be really convenient. I asked the old man about it at the time, and he said that there were only a few dozen possible key configurations for the number of tumblers (or something like that) so it was fairly common.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Not sure about the current status of this but a few years ago one major maker of heavy construction equipment caught a little heat for using the same key set in every piece of equipment they made.

jtk


Choose either Cat, or International. They both did the same

[Tom M King]

Bobcat, and John Deere too. I called my hay supplier one time about getting a load of hay. He said he would be gone, but I could load, and asked if I had a John Deere key. I did.

[Mike Henderson]

Back in the 1950's they were doing some earth moving work on the land next to our farm (I was a kid about 10). On a day they weren't working, I went over there and hot wired a bulldozer. It was very, very easy - just scrape two wires going to the key and wrap them together. Started up just fine. I had a problem figuring out how to stop it, however, since it was a diesel. Finally got it shut down and unwound the key wires so they wouldn't know what had happened.

Mike

[Derek Meyer]

I had it happen to me a few years ago. I had just finished bowling league and was walking out the door to get in my car, and I saw the lights flash as if it was being unlocked, then someone opened the door and got in. She sat there for a second, then got out with a bewildered look on her face. Turns out she had the same white colored Ford Edge as me, parked 4 spaces down, and her key fob opened my doors. She didn't say if she tried to start it with her key or not. She was pretty embarassed.

I had a 1969 Ford XL (Galaxie 500) where the ignition was so worn, the key would sometimes fall out while driving. The key I had was an original and was so worn that the edges were rounded over, yet it still started. I never did try starting it with a screwdriver, but was told that I could do that in an emergency.

[Jerome Stanek]

I remember one time I had my sisters 69 Camaro at the parking lot I worked part time for and the bosses son came in with his Corvette. I joked about how the keys looked like one another and went over and started his Corvette with the Camaro keys.

[Brian Elfert]

Toro for many years used the same generic key in all of their equipment even commercial equipment costing tens of thousands of dollars. Maybe they still use the same key today.

[Jerome Stanek]

Toro for many years used the same generic key in all of their equipment even commercial equipment costing tens of thousands of dollars. Maybe they still use the same key today.

When I worked construction all our equipment used the same Indak key but most had a cover plate that could be locked. We used the same pad lock on all the plates. so only had 2 keys.

[Curt Harms]

Not sure about the current status of this but a few years ago one major maker of heavy construction equipment caught a little heat for using the same key set in every piece of equipment they made.

jtk

There were a couple makes/models of airplanes where if you had 5 different keys for that make/model you could open any door in that make/model's fleet.

[Rick Potter]

1950's GM cars had an ignition switch that allowed you to turn the car off and remove the key in two positions. If you didn't turn it all the way off, the car could be started without a key. I think they used that setup until the early 60's. Everybody knew about it.

I remember walking to work one morning, and seeing a large backhoe in a field with the back up alarm beeping. Walking home the next morning, it was still there beeping, so I checked it out. No key that I could see, so I just bumped the shifter lever out of reverse and left it. A woman came out of a nearby house and thanked me....it had been beeping all weekend.

[Ronald Blue]

Choose either Cat, or International. They both did the same

I have a Cat key that will fit every Cat machine we have (hundreds) and also had a John Deere key that was the same. There are other better ways to secure them then a unique key. Just had a Cat tracked skidsteer last week that we changed the battery in. We couldn't start it without a default security pin code that had to be entered. If we chose to it could be set with a code of our choosing to prevent unauthorized use. 3 tries and it locks you out for 15 minutes.

[Terry Therneau]

When I was in college I had friend who was a bit of a packrat -- his key chain had all the keys he'd ever used. One day he noticed that the key slot for one of the elevators looked much like a car, and low and behold one of his old car keys fit it perfectly. We actually made use of that one day to commandeer the elevator for a practical joke (swapped the contents of two dorm rooms on different floors). This was a GE elevator (1974). I assume that GE ordered the tumblers from the same supplier GM used.

Terry T