Portlander Accidentally Steals a Car

[nayr]

http://www.9news.com/news/local/portland-womans-stolen-car-returned-with-note-gas-money-and-a-crazy-story/343070294

camera capture in news video

perhaps this explains some of those weird thefts we keep getting reports of out of Portland.. I blame the lack of sunshine, when even plastic starts to mold something aint right.

 

[Parley]

That is a strange story. I guess some keys will interchange in some of the older Subaru's.

 

[nayr]

would be a good prank to play, swapping people's cars out heh.. could you imagine getting up in the morning, unlocking your car, starting it up.. then realizing everything is different.. I dont think I would know what the hell was going on.. I'd probably go back inside and drink another cup of coffee and question my sanity.

 

[erkme73]

I think this happened a lot more than people realize. Back in the mid 90's, I had a friend who came out from shopping at Publix. She got into her red Pontiac. At first she wondered what happened to her fuzzy dice, and why her seat was back further than it should be. She started the car and headed home. Two hours later, the police showed up explaining what happened. They claimed that car manufacturers are allowed to have up to SIX matching car keys for a given make/model PER STATE, and for whatever reason, two of those six were parked in the same parking lot. I would bet it was a lot more than six.

 

[dorcse]

Somewhat related I guess, and kind of funny. Years ago in Massachusetts I stopped to help a woman. Her car had broken down on a highway ramp. She was in a pretty bad spot, so I pulled up right behind her car. I was driving a blue/gray crown vic that had been passed down to me. As I was standing with her near her car, a state trooper pulled directly behind my car. After he got her info and chatted with us for a minute, he says "I'm going to go call for a wrecker." He walks away, hops into MY car and presumably tries to reach for his mic. He quickly realizes his mistake, hops out of MY car and walks one car back to HIS crown vic and gets in. I looked at the woman and both us just burst out laughing. We just could not help ourselves. When the cop came back he never said a word, but the poor guy looked a bit embarrassed.

 

[bp2008]

People get into other people's cars in parking lots by accident all the time. I may have done that once or twice myself.

Not very common to be able to start it up and go though.