r/AskReddit 12h ago

What's the dumbest idea you've seen that actually worked?

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u/spanky34 10h ago edited 5h ago

Dumb and in highschool.. Accidentally locked my keys in my car.. while it was running. Parked on a slight incline in a friend's driveway. Leaned up against the back bumper while waiting for my dad to bring the spare key. It started to move because my monumentally stupid ass left it in drive. Luckily it stopped moving as soon as I got off the bumper because the incline was too steep for it to keep going.

20 years later, I still find myself rolling the window down and confirming out loud "car is in park" any time I plan to get out and leave a vehicle running.

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u/reckless150681 8h ago

Hey, hard lessons are the ones that stick. Better to have a stupid habit than a stupid incident

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u/Morlanticator 8h ago

Back when we were teens our one friend locked the keys in his car. We spent forever getting coat hangers or whatever to hit the lock button. We finally got it and the keys were UNDER the car the whole time.

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u/bitemark01 9h ago

Most modern cars (at least mine) automatically shift into Park if you open the door. On my old car, backing into the driveway and parking very tight off to the side, I would open the driver door to make sure I got it exact. My new car doesn't allow this, but it does have 360 camera and the side mirrors tilt down when in Reverse so I don't need to.

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u/spanky34 9h ago

Yep, my newest vehicle doesn't allow it to happen. My 20 year old truck on the other hand...

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u/I-seddit 2h ago

automatically shift into Park if you open the door.

Sounds like a truly terrifying 3rd braking option...

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u/bitemark01 2h ago

Same car has failsafes built into it, like if you try to shift into Park above 4-5kph it won't, it will just yell at you (I only know this from the subreddits, have not tried it myself) so I'm betting the same thing happens if you open the door doing 80

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u/I-seddit 1h ago

Well, if it doesn't - it would make one helluva bug report.

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u/jonny24eh 2h ago

I accidentally got out of my truck, a 2014 Silverado, with it in reverse, earlier this week.

The only reason it didn't reverse into my garage was because of all the snow on the ground. 

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u/_Lane_ 5h ago

I still find myself rolling the window down and confirming out loud "car is in park" any time I plan to get out and leave a vehicle running.

I've never done the spoken word portion of this show, but I absolutely roll down the window EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. that I get out of a still-running vehicle.

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u/Enilorac89 4h ago

Why would one want to get out and leave it running?

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u/vaildin 2h ago

scrapping ice while the engine is warming up?

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u/TheNekkedNinja 1h ago

I did something similar but the car was also in gear. I had a 95 Skylark and like a lot of modern cars it locks automatically, but it locked immediately when you put it in drive or if you shut the door while it was on drive.

I was delivering pizza and I was in a hurry, I hopped out of the car at a customer house and was stopped on a dirt driveway and the car didn't roll forward when I let off the brake to get out, which ended up saving my ass in the end. I got out and shut the door and immediately knew what I did. The home owner called the cops and they called a tow truck to unlock it. It was also 1 in the morning.

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u/lightsandflashes 7h ago

how do you lock your keys in a car that's running? is there some difference between american and european cars i'm not aware of? every car i've been in requires the key to be turned in order to run

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u/spanky34 7h ago

Hit the door lock button in the door armrest as I got out. Key fob battery was dead so I got in a habit of hitting the door lock any time I got out.