What would be the first thing(or second or third…) to do after losing your keys

[LittleMissPiggy]

A bunch of keys was left on the roof of the car before we drove on Carmel Valley road, 56 West, I-5 South to Morena Blvd.. 25 minutes later came back looking for the keys, and there was no trace of it anywhere…

Do you guys think that a bunch of keys with keychain, car keys etc can disappear like that?
Without a trace? No debris left behind? What kind of mess would you expect to see if it fell off on the freeway?or on street?

Two possibilities:
Somebody took them.
Nobody took them.

Somebody took them. It can not be anyone driving a car, because I don’t think one can see a thing of that size from far away. and by the time one sees it, it is too late! I think it could very well be the bicyclists’ on Carmel valley road(Giving that the keys did not stay on the roof of a moving car for long enough to have reached the freeway..Any thoughts on this?). Or landscaping contractors or a passer by may have seen and recovered it from the street. In short keys are not there, they are somewhere else. Whole, in one piece.

Nobody took them.
In this case, a car ran over them..Or multiple cars ran over them..What kind of debris do you expect? I tried to look on the street..before the freeway, but could not find a trace of it. Which means it could be on the freeway..I looked there too, but could not see anything substantial..Do you expect to see much? or nothing as they may have been pulverized by running cars?

At my wits end.. Put on some flyers, called the police.. What else can I do? Do you guys think it could lead to something scary? What should be done in such situation? Any anecdotes? thoughts?

[Coronita]

….So this afternoon….I was driving on 56 west minding my own business when I noticed the car in front of me had something on the roof…I couldn’t see exactly what it was, looked like a bird or something. But then suddenly, when the person sped up on 56, it came flying off the roof. In panic, I didn’t want want whatever was on the roof to land on my hood or windshield and wreck my almost new car…In my attempt to swerve avoid it… I slammed on my brakes long enough that the object fell right to the ground…right before I 4000+ lb SUV rolled right over it… “Crunch”… Plob plob plob, I heard whatever the objects were banging against my wheel arch and then.. “Fling…” it spun right out on the the freeway medium… As I passed it, I could see something bright, as if the sun was hitting something metal… Then I realized those things were probably keys that someone had accidentally left on their roof, because with the latest cars with keyless entry…one doesn’t need to stick the keeys in the ignition to start the car….Needless to say, I felt pretty bad for the person in front of me..Because I don’t think he/she would realize the missing keys until after he/she got to his/her destination. And while here personal safety probably would never be compromised since the keys flew to the medium where no one can see them…(Even if someone did pick them up, they wouldn’t know what to do with it…unless it had a tag on it with someone’s phone number or worse, someone’s address.)…I felt bad for the person, because it’s never fun to loose one’s keys, especially every key house/car/office/etc.

Needless to say, I think the first thing that person would want to do is for house, make a duplicate copy of the house key….For the car key, it may be expensive to replace the FOB type key directly from the stealer. So the other option would be try to do it yourself and order a key from ebay. For the office, one could call maintanance and just have the locked drilled/picked out…And I guess chalk this up as a lesson learned…Don’t leave stuff on the roof of a car…

BUT as bad as this person may be feeling, other people have done much worse….Some people have left cell phones and laptop bags on a roof, and had them fall off the roof right behind the 4000+lb vehicle while the 4000+lb vehicle was backing up…Crunch….Ah yes, interesting day it must have been for that person…

[earlyretirement]

OMG flu…I laughed when I was reading your response.

To the OP, i’m sorry to hear about you losing your keys but at first while reading your post I thought it was a joke.

You drove for 25 minutes all that way and you really expected to find the keys not knowing where they fell off??

I seriously doubt someone took them off your car. I’d chalk it up to them falling off somewhere along the 25 minutes that you were driving. It’s impossible to say where they fell off and I personally wouldn’t worry unless you had some kind of identification or address on the keychain (which would be fairly foolish to have on).

Hard to believe someone would call the police or put up flyers over missing keys. Unless you had some key to some safe deposit box that had some serious loot in it. And even then, banks can easily get you a new key.

Inquiring minds want to know after reading your post (and Flu’s response…). What exactly was on your key chain?

If you’re that nervous about it, just change your lock for whatever keys you had on it but personally I wouldn’t do that unless you had your name/address on it.

[moneymaker]

With my work truck I will sometimes put trash on the bumper with the intention of throwing it into the nearest trash can, only to find that I forgot about it and it is still there after driving for miles. Most things will stay on the car top believe it or not until you make a sharp turn somewhere. That is where i would look at the first on/off ramp.

[LittleMissPiggy]

For the benefit of inquiring minds,

There was nothing special, the keychain was 15 yrs old. Keys were to house, mailbox and car itself.
I did an experiment with my only left keys..I put them on the top of the same car the same way and drove the same route. I expected them to drop in less than 2 minutes, but they did not, and from the way they looked on the top of the roof I think they dropped somewhere on Carmel Valley road. Or worse– on freeway.

[Coronita]

[quote=LittleMissPiggy]For the benefit of inquiring minds,

There was nothing special, the keychain was 15 yrs old. Keys were to house, mailbox and car itself.
I did an experiment with my only left keys..I put them on the top of the same car the same way and drove the same route. I expected them to drop in less than 2 minutes, but they did not, and from the way they looked on the top of the roof I think they dropped somewhere on Carmel Valley road. Or worse– on freeway.[/quote]

I don’t think you really need to worry even if someone picks them up…As long as you don’t have any tags/name/info on the keychain.

1. Regarding your mailbox key: If you only have one left, I would go to Home Depot and buy a mailbox lock for like $5 and change the lock yourself. It’s not security..It’s if you happen to lose your last mailbox key, it makes it *that* much harder to deal with, than if you just had 2 keys…

2. Car keys: If it’s just a plain old car key, you can probably get the duplicated at most locksmith.. IF your car key is a special keyless remote and you have only one left, I would also immediately get one… Depending on your brand of car, some keyless systems if you lose all your FOB’s, you’ll need to replace the entire key system ($600+)…Prius is an example .

3. House key is easy.

[svelte]

This same thing happened to me 20 yrs or so ago. I left my wallet on the roof. I backtracked my drive and actually witnessed someone picking it up out of the street. I pulled over, they saw me and ran.

When I caught up with them, it turned out to be 2 teens who I don’t think had made up their mind what to do with the wallet when they saw me, so they panicked and ran. They jumped in a bush and threw the wallet out to me.

The lesson I learned from all this was never EVER set anything on the roof – and I haven’t since that day. If I must set something down (very very rarely), I set it on the hood directly in front of the steering wheel so that when I start the car, I will see what I’ve forgotten.

[sdduuuude]

I’ve left things on the roof before. You’d be surprised far stuff will travel up there.

[Ren]

Someone did that with a baby in a car seat recently. The baby ended up sitting in the middle of an intersection, not a scratch.

[Ren]

[quote=svelte]If I must set something down (very very rarely), I set it on the hood directly in front of the steering wheel so that when I start the car, I will see what I’ve forgotten.[/quote]

This is brilliant.

[scaredyclassic]

we once drove a while with some spaghetti ina container on our roof. some dude pointed at our car while we were driving, sort of dipped to one knee while he pointed. we were laughing at how he looked, like, what’s with him??!! then we realized we had left spaghetti up there… we still laugh about the way the guy pointed like 20 years later.
i can remember exactly how he looked, point, drop, swivel. he was so smoothe!!!!

i pointed out a kids toy on the back of someone’s car a week ago, it was on there nice and snug, the guy looked at me like i was so weird, honking and pointing, then he jumped out and got it.

made me think of the guy dropping to one knee. pointing at the spaghetti.

[Anonymous]

I once drove with my dog on the roof of my car. All the way to Canada! It was a bit messy at times – seems maybe Howard Johnson’s food didn’t agree with the old fella. A couple hours into it, the wife says, “Well, either it’s raining mud, or poor Seamus is having a bit of trouble up on the roof.” Not a big problem, though. Just hose him off, and he’s ready to go again. Real trooper, Seamus. I’d have offered to let him in the car at that point. But he likes fresh air. Plus, we like fresh air, too, and Seamus wasn’t quite… fresh at that point.

We’re conservatives, but we have some token liberal friends. They weren’t happy with our decision to transport our dog on the roof of our car, even though he was in a kennel with a windshield. We told them to fuck off.

[Coronita]

….Could be worse…

http://carscoop.blogspot.com/2011/12/lady-owner-of-bmw-5-series-drives-off.html

Hmm 4 Bimmers in a row!

….

Not so environmental friendly prius..

Family vacation

Another one..

Even the fuzz does it sometimes…

[CA renter]

[quote=Willard]I once drove with my dog on the roof of my car. All the way to Canada! It was a bit messy at times – seems maybe Howard Johnson’s food didn’t agree with the old fella. A couple hours into it, the wife says, “Well, either it’s raining mud, or poor Seamus is having a bit of trouble up on the roof.” Not a big problem, though. Just hose him off, and he’s ready to go again. Real trooper, Seamus. I’d have offered to let him in the car at that point. But he likes fresh air. Plus, we like fresh air, too, and Seamus wasn’t quite… fresh at that point.

We’re conservatives, but we have some token liberal friends. They weren’t happy with our decision to transport our dog on the roof of our car, even though he was in a kennel with a windshield. We told them to fuck off.[/quote]

Too funny! 🙂

[Akula1992]

It could always be worse…

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[Author]

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