Snow and cold and frosty mornings bring many problems to the motorist. Before you venture onto icy roads, you’ve got to defrost your car. Scraping ice off your windscreen isn’t a lot of fun in sub-zero temperatures. And if you leave your car unattended while it warms up, you risk it being stolen.
But this month the cold weather caused another problem. Although it’s attributed to a frosty morning, this motorist’s dilemma can’t be completely blamed on the weather but more on where she kept her spare car keys.
As you know, we respond to emergencies when people get locked out of their cars. That’s what happened to Kate one icy morning in January as she was leaving for work. Her car was parked on the drive. She put her handbag and mobile phone on the passenger seat, started the engine and got out to scrape the ice off the windows.
With her windscreen cleared, Kate went to open the car door to discover her central locking system had activate itself. Whoops! But she wasn’t worried. Her boyfriend had just popped out with the dog and left the back door unlocked. She had a spare car key in the house – somewhere!
Except, she couldn’t find her spare car key and realised to her horror that it was in her handbag – in the car! As it happens, Kate’s other half is a driving instructor and he regularly tells her off for keeping her spare car key in her handbag.
So we’re hoping that being two hours late for work, having to call out her friendly vehicle locksmith to open her car and incurring the wrath of her boss (and her boyfriend), Kate will now keep her spare car keys somewhere safe in the future.
The moral to that story, in case you hadn’t guessed, is to always keep your spare car keys somewhere safe and sensible. If you need to use them, be sure to put them back as soon as you’re finished with them. And if you don’t and you get locked out of your car … my number’s 07798 557 188.