Elderly Couple Trapped In Keyless Car For 13 Hours

An elderly couple in New Zealand had a near-death experience when they found themselves trapped in a Mazda 3 hatchback parked in their own garage for about 13 hours.

It was all based on a misunderstanding.

Brian and Mollieanne Smith, both in their 60s, inadvertently left the car’s keyless transponder fob in the house when they got into the car at about 7 pm. “Once they were inside the doors automatically locked, and with the new user’s manual back at their home, they couldn’t find the manual override,” MSN Motoring reported.

They wrongly assumed that because the car was keyless, they couldn’t just unlock the door manually by simply pulling on the handle. To make matters worse, New Zealand was celebrating a national holiday with fireworks, so no one heard them laying on the horn in an attempt to get help. Mr. Smith even tried to smash through a car window with the jack to no avail.

Neighbors rescued them the following morning. By then, Mollieanne Smith was unconscious and her husband was having trouble breathing. EMTs indicated that they were a half hour from possible death, according to New Zealand’s Otago Daily Times.

Mrs. Smith received treatment at a local hospital for three days.

Said Brian Smith about the ordeal involving the forgotten transponder fob, “‘Once I found out how simple it was to unlock it I kicked myself that I did not find the way out… I had this mind-set that I did not have the transponder [so I could not get out].”

The salesman who sold them the vehicle “had made it seem the car would not work without the transponder,” Smith added.

This incident happened in early November, but the couple recently decided to go public as a way to warn others who might find themselves in the same predicament owing to unfamiliarity with keyless entry. Reportedly, they’ve been contacted by other motorists, possibly in the same age bracket, who have had similar confusion with remote keyless entry.

Commenting on this incident, a Mazda New Zealand executive explained that “It’s not a design flaw with the car… what we have said to the network is, with new technologies, don’t forget to show customers how to use them in their entirety [and] how to override them. There is always a manual process to override them.”

The exec deemed the Smith’s frightening, all-night mishap an “industry first,” but added that Mazda will do a better job explaining the technology to customers moving forward so that this kind of scenario won’t happen again.