Professional thieves can steal a car in minutes, even without having the owner’s original key. One New York City woman thought that she had her vehicle stole by a professional thief when she was out to brunch in Brooklyn. In less than ten minutes, while she was eating, her green Honda Accord was stolen from right out from of the restaurant. Surely this must have been the work of a highly skilled thief the New York woman thought.
“We all thought she must have been a professional! How do you steal a car in less than a minute?”
At the same time, another Brooklyn woman was on vacation with friends in Miami. Her friend, also the owner of a green Honda Civic, and her, Nekishia Davis, asked Davis’s mother to move their cars while they were away in order to comply with city parking rules. Nekisia’s mother moved the vehicles and thought that it had been done so completely successfully. However, once the women returned from Miami and Nekisia’s friend went to retrieve her car from the spot her mother parked in, she found that the car in that spot was not hers. It was also a green Honda Accord, but not the one that she owned.
“Deanna said,‘I can’t find my car.’ And my mom said, ‘It’s right there.’ And Deanna said, ‘That’s not my car.’ And my mom said ‘well that’s the car I moved with your keys,’”
It turns out that Nekishia’s mother had used the keys that for the friend’s Honda Accord to not only open a completely different car’s door, but start the engine as well. When reached out to for comment Honda said that it was highly unlikely that a key would work for two separate vehicles. While highly unlikely, it is possible in Honda models that were manufactured prior to the year 1998. Following 1998, Honda implemented transponders to their car keys which prevent situations like this from happening. Since the key must be properly programmed to the car’s on-board computer, the key will not start the vehicle. This is true even if the key fits into both the ignition and the door. The Honda Accords in this story were older model vehicles so there was no additional security that a transponder key offers. In this case all it took was the off chance that both keys were made to the same exact cut.
In order to protect your vehicle from having something liek this happen, you may want to consider bringing back the classic steering wheel lock like The Club. This is especially true if you have a car key that does not have a transponder chip in it. These vehicle tend to be older model vehicles, with a majority of major automakers switching from non-transponder keys to transponder car keys in the late 1990’s. This is definitely one of those stories where you just have to ask, what are the odds? Thankfully everyone got their vehicles back and the whole ordeal can be marked up to a freak occurrence.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh9DsW36Lak]