If you happen to have access to the steel banding that's used to secure heavy stuff to pallets, the wider (>1") variety is great material for a homemade, five minute slim jim... It's like a hide-a-key that works for everybody else's car, too!

The one time I had to have someone open a car with a slim jim (an experienced mechanic, no less) they spent over half an hour without a bit of success, deemed it unopenable, and we ended up having to smash a window. Apparently a lot of locks simply can't be opened that way (and this was a mid 80s pickup, not some kind of modern thing).

On the bright side, he didn't charge.

What kind of car was it, OZ? I didn't take much time on that post, so I didn't get too specific. I will say that 100% of my experience has been with 80's and newer domestic vehicles, with manual locks, where the lock rod moved vertically within the door. So basically, the easiest ones. I've tried a few where it had to move horizontally (like in a lot of 90's GM stuff) and with those, you're better off going between the window glass and weatherstripping and trying to grab the lock or door handle itself with something. The other benefit of that method is that it doesn't matter if the lock rod is protected from being manipulated from outside the car. There are cars you can't slim jim, so the AAA rescue guys will often immediately skip the slim jim and use an inflatable wedge to open a gap in the side window glass. I'm sure if you do enough of them, you just learn what works best with what from trial and error, unless you go study the internals in a scrap yard or something...

I used to work in a service department with a bunch of guys who went out in different company trucks every day, so it happened fairly often. I have a feeling if I were dealing with a bunch of brand new European cars, it wouldn't have worked out as well.

Anyways, yeah, the vertical kind doesn't work on everything, but it does work on a lot of stuff. Also, it's just kind of fun to try and you get to feel like a poor man's James Bond or something.

There's a range of bmw (and probably other euro luxury cars) models that cannot be mechanically opened from inside or outside the vehicle without the electronics allowing it. Pull door handle, pull on door lock, etc it just ignores it and springs back to a locked state. When I've had to access the back seats of these cars in a junk yard (because the guys setting up the cars don't have enough brains to unlock the rear doors before yanking the battery and throwing away the key) I have to feed electricity through the wiring to the door lock motor to unlock it.

An adult did apparently die from getting left locked in a bmw during a model range when it was impossible to open the car from the interior no matter what you did. Since then BMW has added a work around if you press the interior unlock button and pull the door handle. Sets off the car alarm though.

I can't remember, wasn't my car. Mid to late 80s, American. That's all I've got. This was in like 1999. But yeah, it had a horizontal rocker type of mechanism for locking, instead of a vertical lock rod, and that was the problem.

Robbed of a Instagram puppy memorial. Likes would have been off the charts. So sad.

Stat. § 768.139 grants civil immunity for damage to the vehicle for a person who “enters a motor vehicle, by force or otherwise, for the purpose of removing a vulnerable person or domestic animal,” as long as certain conditions are met, such as first calling 9-1-1, using no more force than is reasonably necessary, and remaining with the vulnerable person or animal in a safe location near the vehicle until law enforcement arrives.