Dont ever! give your car keys to kids

Automation has its pros and cons. It has made our lives very easy but sometimes some instances make it questionable. Like what happened with me yesterday.

One question to all before you read further:

What do you think your kid will do when he/she has the car keys and is in the car?? 

There are thousand possibilities like he will throw the keys, he will keep jingling them, he will chew them but the possibility of him coming out of the car and locking it is zero.

My Story:

My 19 months old son was not well so I took a day off from office to visit his doctor. After the consultation, we directly went to market to buy the medicines as advised by his paediatrician.

As mentioned in the last article http://rideandrite.blogspot.com/2019/01/car-battery-and-other-parts-theft-in.html,

I drive a Hyundai Verna which has an automatic car remote to access the car doors. Both my house keys are in the same key chain as my car remote.

After buying the medicines, I started fixing my son on his baby car cushion seat. As a regular kid he started to run towards steering wheel to play with it. As I have to adjust the cushion seat and lock at 3-4 points, I gave him my car keys to play so that I do the locking easily. He started playing with it and I did my work of fixing him silently.

This is the exact Car Seat Cushion i have for my son

Just after fixing him on his seat, I closed the car door without taking the car keys back and immediately I realised that I had done a blunder. I tried to open the door but my son had already locked the car from the remote. For a second, my brain stopped working realizing what has happened. He was locked in the car, fixed on his car cushion with all the doors locked and mirrors up – all these thoughts gave me mini heart attacks.  Panicked, I called my wife and asked her to rush to home from office, pick the spare key and reach the market asap. Hurriedly she left from her office which is 25 kms from that market.

It became very difficult for me as I was feeling helpless and panicked. Slowly I took deep breaths and started to think what to do. The first thing I wanted to do was to remove panic from my face so that my son doesn’t get the same after seeing my panicked face. I again took 2 deep breaths and looked at my son through the window glass.

He gave me the sweetest smile ever as he was playing with keys and jingling them. My heart was sinking on the other hand but I started talking with him in actions. The only reply I started getting was smile at that time. My mind was getting ready to break the car window glass to get the access of the car in another 10-15 minutes.

I kept on trying to communicate with him with different actions asking him to push the button on car remote. With every action, I was opening the lever of the car door so that I might not lose any chance to open if he clicks on the right button of the remote.

I kept trying without fail when suddenly after like 5-6 minutes I got lucky. The car door got opened. I took the keys from him, sat at the driver’s seat, closed the car and thanked god for what he just did. I looked at him and his reaction was ditto same. He was smiling and I am happy that he didn’t get panicked.

This incidence taught me that never ever give your car keys and in fact any other keys to your kids because you can’t even speculate what can happen with them. I have heard many stories about kids doing various things which can never be imagined like once One of my colleagues told me that his daughter had put a 1 Rupee coin in the steering wheel while playing on the driver seat of his Honda and he had to give the car to the service centre and was charged Rs 10000/- to remove 1 Rupee coin. These kinds of incidences looks funny till it happens with ourselves.

Also if something like this happens with someone then he/she has to be calm and handle the kids because they get same feelings what they see on their parents face. I don’t know how but kids have this sixth sense.

** - All the 3 Images are from google.com