What to Request? -- Dealer Settings

Just what I was thinking - its a pain in the patootie, but <I think> the original reason for all the locking and unlocking nonsense was security. If you walk up to the car and all the doors unlock you may be inviting unwanted riders. Same with putting it in park and having all the doors unlock.

Steve - like you I don't always lock the door to my house because the neighborhood I'm in is so safe. BUT when I go to a Red Sox game - honey, those doors are locked!!

Bottom line guys - remember that saftey concern for your wives who may be driving the car!!

 

True, but it really does depend on where you live. We rarely go out late at night and when we do it's not to places my wife or I would worry about. I guess if the system is easy to customize you could change it easily enough.
I think the reason it's so customizable is because many people have different needs.
Now if I can just get the car here to begin with.....

 

It probably also depends somewhat on who uses the car. For a family car in a safe place, sure, it makes total sense to open all the doors at once.

My car usually contains only me. I'd much rather (sigh, what a job!) push the button twice if I need to unlock all the doors. That way, I explicitly unlock the doors only when I want them unlocked.

As you say, it's a matter of personal preference. I just thought the security issue might bear mentioning for those who hadn't considered it and might want to.

 

+1
Absolutely! The city I used to live in, no way would I want the doors all being opened at the same time.
Where I live now it's very different, so that's good. At least the door locks are easy to set according to what other posters are saying.

 

This thread is a big help. It seems the owners manual is a monster of a book. (good beach reading for this summer*) I hadn't thought there'd be so many goodies, options, etc that might not be reasonable for a *normal* owner to customize. Those are the things I'll ask the dealer to, uh, deal with.

*Assuming I get the car before the snow flies!

hwell:

 

a word of caution from someone who has lived in both rural areas, sleepy suburbs and densely populated cities:

Don't let the seeming 'safe'ness of a community lull you into a false sense of security. Predators and crazy people are not restricted to cities. In fact rural areas now have more meth addicts per capita than cities and meth tutns once good people into crazy predators who'll do anything to get a fix.

I'm not saying live paranoid, but a false sense of security makes you an easy target. Just because you think there are no badguys in your commmunity doesn't mean they aren't there. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Choose your door locking settings with worst case scenarios in mind.

 

An easy way to ensure your safety is to keep the default driver's door only unlock when touching the handle but have the dealer program all doors to unlock in 1-step (rather than 2 steps) using the wireless remote. You use the remote when you have companies.

 

After driving the car (Gen III, model IV) I had my dealer make the following changes:
1. Using a computer: Change the back-up warning to one beep. That's great!
2. Without a computer: Unlock all doors when the driver's door is opened.

 

I had dealer change the following:
1) Backup beeper to single beep
2) Turn off lights immediately on power off (or lock -- I don't remember which)
3) Turn off automatic door locking (I hate it when the doors lock by themselves because I don't want to be locked in)