Keys Locked in the Car Boot, What to Do Now

Try the spare key, the manufacturer app and any unlocked door first, because all three are free. If none of those work, a boot is opened at the roadside without damage rather than forced.

The boot button on the key is almost always what caused it, and knowing that is worth reading later. Getting into the car comes first.

What to try before calling anyone

Four things cost nothing, and it is worth working through all four before anyone is called out.

If any of those four gets the boot open, nothing else on this page matters. If none of them do, the car has to be opened properly, and that is a job rather than a trick.

If a person or pet is inside

Everything on this page assumes the car is empty apart from the keys.

Where a child or an animal is shut inside the vehicle, that is a different situation with a different first call, and it is dealt with separately rather than as a lockout.

Why the boot locks you out

This is not carelessness, and it is worth saying plainly because most people standing behind a closed boot are busy calling themselves an idiot.

The boot button on the key does something different from the unlock button. It releases the boot on its own and deliberately leaves the rest of the car locked, which is a security feature. On most cars the boot then relocks the moment it is closed.

So the sequence that traps people is completely ordinary. Press the boot button with your hands full. Put the keys down in the boot, or in a bag that goes in the boot, or in a jacket that goes in the boot. Close the lid. The car was never unlocked at any point, and now the keys are inside it.

Two situations produce most of these calls. A supermarket car park, where the keys go into the shopping because both hands are occupied. And a gym or a sports club, where a jacket comes off, goes in the boot, and the keys are in the pocket.

Neither involves doing anything wrong. The button works exactly as designed, and the design has this consequence.

It is worth knowing that a handful of cars behave differently and unlock the whole vehicle when the boot button is held rather than pressed. That is the exception rather than the rule, and it is not something to discover for the first time while standing in the rain.

Why a boot is not a locked cabin

A boot lockout is often treated as the same problem as keys on the driver seat. It is not, and the difference changes what can be done.

The boot has its own lock. Opening a door does not open the boot on many cars, so getting into the cabin is not automatically the end of the job.

The release is usually inside. Most cars open the boot from a lever or button in the cabin, or from the key. With the keys in the boot and the cabin locked, both of those are on the wrong side of a locked door.

Some boots have no external lock at all. A growing number of cars have no keyhole on the tailgate, because the designers assumed the key would always be outside it.

What that adds up to is that the cabin is usually opened first and the boot released from inside, rather than the boot being opened directly. It is a longer job than a key on a seat, and it is still a routine one.

Estates and hatchbacks are frequently the easier version, because the rear seats fold and the load space opens into the cabin once a door is available. A saloon with a fixed bulkhead between the boot and the back seat is the harder one, and it is worth mentioning the body shape when you call, because it changes the approach before anyone sets off.

Why a smart key changes it

A keyless car with the key shut in the boot behaves differently again, and not always helpfully.

Many keyless cars will not lock at all while they can sense the key inside, which is exactly the protection needed here. A boot is a metal box at the far end of the car, though, and a key inside it is frequently out of range of the sensors that would have objected.

There is a second oddity worth knowing. Some cars detect the key once the boot is open and the aerials can reach it, so the car sees a key it could not see a moment earlier. That is why a keyless car occasionally behaves unpredictably during this, and why pressing buttons repeatedly is not a plan.

There is also a reason not to keep trying. Repeatedly pressing buttons on a fob that is sealed inside a metal boot drains the cell in it, and a key with a flat cell is a slower job to deal with afterwards than one that still works.

The practical position is the same either way. If the car has not opened after the four free checks, it requires opening properly.

What not to do

Search this problem and you will find all four of the following offered as advice. Each of them turns a call-out into a repair bill.

Prying the top of a door to make a gap. It bends the frame, and a bent door frame leaks and whistles permanently afterwards. The seal never sits properly again.

Breaking a tail light to reach through. A light cluster costs considerably more than opening the car, the hole is rarely big enough to be useful, and the car then fails its next test.

Working on the fuse box to release the boot. This one circulates widely and is the worst of the four. Modern vehicle electronics do not respond well to it, and the faults it causes are expensive to trace.

Cutting through the rear seats. Described in print as a last resort. It destroys the seat, takes about an hour, and the car is then open with a ruined interior.

All four exist because the car looks openable with improvisation. It is not, and every one of these costs more than the job they were avoiding.

Breakdown cover or a locksmith

Both routes work, and which one is right depends on things worth knowing before you call.

Breakdown cover is the right answer when you already have it. If a lockout is included in a policy you pay for, use it. Nothing is cheaper than something already bought, and patrols open cars every day.

Two things to check. Whether your policy covers lockouts at all, because a good many cover recovery and not entry. And whether it covers you at home, because home start is frequently a separate item and a supermarket car park two streets away is not home.

An auto locksmith is usually the faster of the two, and on a boot the more specialised. Entry is the whole job rather than one of a hundred, and the equipment for it is already in the van.

The honest comparison is that a call-out costs money where cover you already hold does not, and that waiting three hours for a free option is not free if the evening is gone. Both are reasonable. Neither is a trap.

Where the car has been sitting since before the shops shut, out of hours availability is often what decides it rather than price.

How a locksmith opens it

What happens on arrival is undramatic, which is the point.

Ownership is confirmed first. That is a document check and it protects you, because the same check stops anybody else having your car opened.

The car is then opened without damage using tools made for the purpose, the cabin is entered, and the boot is released from inside in the normal way. Nothing is cut, forced or replaced, and the car locks and unlocks afterwards exactly as it did before.

Most cars take between ten and thirty minutes once somebody is standing at them. The waiting is the arrival, not the work.

One question worth asking when booking is whether the price covers the boot specifically. Opening a cabin and releasing a boot from inside is the normal route, although on a small number of cars the boot is separate enough that it counts as extra work. Asking removes the only surprise this job tends to produce.

Stop it happening again

Worth doing once, and it removes this permanently.

Where there is no second key at all, having one cut is worth doing before it is needed rather than after. A second key made while the original works is always the cheaper version of that job.

Getting the boot opened

Three answers settle what is needed before anyone travels.

The make, model and year, which decides how the car is approached. Whether the car is keyless or uses a turn key. And whether any door is unlocked, because that occasionally changes the job entirely.

With those three, keys locked in the car is a booked job with a time and a price rather than an open-ended wait, and the car is opened where it stands.