I live in NYC, so it's never occured to me to leave the keys in the door. If I'm feeling very daring, I leave the top lock of my apartment unlocked. Not that I've ever been burgled, but who wants to take a chance? I also always lock the doors of any car I'm in when I leave it. Not doing so is asking for it to get stolen, IMO.

I lock up in my hometown now at night- and I always lock my bike up now....idiotic and bored teens around, too many new people, and my sister does not understand the art of an amiable breakup

But if I'm in one of the nearby farming towns, I never lock up anything (and I leave the keys in the door, because otherwise my grandma accidentally locks herself or me out.)

When I'm at college- I lock my door the first week and the last week and whenever I know there's a big bash on Greek Row (drunken frat boys are only funny if they're not in your reshall). Otherwise, I feel perfectly safe

I grew up in a family where we didn't lock doors. In fact, our neighbor was robbed and he had an alarm system and two german shepherds. All along we were unlocked and on vacation. Dallas.

I've left the keys in my apartment door a couple of times, and neighbors have knocked on the door to inform me (opps), I also once accidently left my back door (that lead out to the wooden fire-escape porch thing) open and went away for the weekend, thankfully nothing happened. Naturally I would never do this purposely, when I'm feeling daring, my front door isn't deadbolted

As far as my bicycle is concerned, I've had two locked bikes stolen in the past year, so when I get a new one, I'm going to be taking it inside with me. My years of living in Chicago have made me understandably neuotic with my car (when I had one), I always locked it and never left anything in it (I learned the hard way a few times when I did leave things in it and came back to broken windows). Whenever I go to smaller towns or visit my friends in more rural settings, my locking up habits are snickered at, but that is what it is, a habit, I don't really consider myself a paranoid person and generally feel pretty safe.

I live in Brooklyn, NY and did this once! I was shocked and relieved when I saw that we made it through the night, but then I got to thinking - what are the odds that someone walking by (how many passerbys do you get in the middle of the night) would actually see the key, and then what are the odds that the person is a criminal and would risk waltzing into someone's home! I think we're all a little paranoid at times.

John

I have left the garage door open overnight and all of our tools were stolen during the night. I guess they just drive through neighborhoods looking for open garages or something. Since then, my husband found a nifty device at Sears that you can install on the door. Then there's a little radio-receiver that you can put on the nightstand that just has a red light or green light to let you know that the garage door is open or closed. It's been very handy and doesn't take up much space.
Although neighbors are pretty good at letting you know if your garage door is open after about 10:00 p.m.

Nobody but nobody walks past the front door without my dog (Maltese) leting me know. He will only bark if they touch the door or stand in front of it longer than he deems necessary.

Very safe here. My immediate neighbor is a detective, and his friends come through our "hood" all year, plus, our neighbor on the corner is a police officer, so between them, dogs and moose, we are pretty secure..
we don't lock our door for local errands, and the retired neighbors always keep an informal neighborhood watch going, so it's not a worry.
I do lock my door when I shower(if home alone).. too many memories of the movie Psycho>-) J.

starrsville, I think I'd feel safer on finding the key in the door than I did with what happened to us the other night:

Though our suburban neigbhorhood is pretty safe, I turn our alarm system on every night. Last week, we had all the windows in our house replaced, and that meant rewiring the alarm to each of them. A few nights ago, at 2:20 in the morning, one of the new connections detached, and the alarm went off!

We woke up with the alarm blaring, and were so befuddled that it took us a good half-minute to kill the siren. Meanwhile, the company called us and, since our phone line was busy (with the alarm), sent the police out to our house!

My husband's 80-year-old father called us--the security co. called him when they couldn't raise us, so he got a middle-of-the-night phone call...

Eventually, we sorted it all out and went back to bed--stunningly, my husband fell right back to sleep. Me, I looked at the inside of my eyelids for quite some time before getting up at 6 AM to move our cars. But that's another story...

Vittrad, same here. Being careful is not paranoid. I, from necessity, often must frequent places in Chicago for long periods that 90% of the people on Fodors would fear to even transverse. And also have to stay there overnight on weekends as well- to take care of relatives, so I am definitely not in any fearful category. My car is 10 years old on purpose right now because of the frequency I must do it.

In the past at my MIL's you wouldn't wake up with your car battery still present if it was a "non-neighborhood" car, and sometimes not even then. Gas could be gone as well.

There are people (usually drug addicts), and this is huge in the "country" settings right now with massive rural meth usage, that NEVER break in. They look for the open garage doors and lax front doors. They will walk from house to house as if they are a sales person or looking for a lost animal in the daytime- or stop at the darkest locations at night. All times, just "trying" the door. They sell what they can pick up fastest. It's usually money, jewelry, electronics or tools.

That you can get by without ever locking the doors, and in MI I do see people that do not use keys at all- then you are lucky, on an island or on a farm. Well, that's great. But your luck may run out.

And you do NOT want to wake up to company. It is no fun, and it's when real injury occurs because of recognition issues.

And never, ever be that lax while traveling in any big city. Please.

If you worked at a crisis center for less than a week, you would never forget your keys in the door again. And many of these women are not from city locations nor have ever been in one.

The original question was about being "freaked". I am not fearful unless I see reason, and I would not be freaked if I forgot to lock doors. But it does freak me to read the other side (on this board of law abiding citizens, I presume) as opposed to what I hear from the streetwise or former (well, I hope so)thieves who has told me about how easy it was to do this in small towns. I guess they have not exaggerated.

Everyone wants to feel safe and be the lest tied down to locks and other devices. But a real irony is that when people move because they feel unsafe, they can be the most criticized for doing so, by the people who are statistically the most safe at the present time.

My biggest challenge is to keep from getting locked OUT!

On the serious side, I have installed motion detector lights all around the entire house, and helped some of the neighbors too. Now I can't go out in my skivvies to get the paper!

I recall one of my neighbors chasing a rather large stray dog down the street with a shovel (still makes me laugh).

On the other hand, a neighbor about 5 doors down woke up to a burglar who entered his home by removing a window. He heard noise from upstairs. He and son apprehended the fellow and held him for the police. I would hate to be in that position, but I notice he has no motion detector lights on his exterior. I recommend them highly if you live in a home.

The only time my lights go on is when the neighbor's cat decides to use my yard for its personal sandbox! grrrr...

>Naturally I would never do this purposely<

Exactly! I agree completely.

In case anyone has difficulty understanding, the key was left in the front door by accident!

Lord have mercy!

My in-laws don't have any locks on their doors, and they never take their keys out of their cars.

We live in a bigger town, but I don't lock my car at night. We've been sleeping with the front door open and just the screen door locked. We have a dog and two widowed old ladies on either side of us. They keep a pretty good eye on things. Sometimes I think they know more about our life than we do.

We went on vacation and forgot to close the garage door. Thankfully, one of our neighbors came home from vacation a couple days after we were gone and closed the door for us.

I don't want to live somewhere where I feel afraid.

I just read an amusing article (well not amusing to the car owner).

A man in Italy parked his car and left the key in the ignition and the car unlocked while he ran into a shop for a minute or two. He departed the shop to find a thief behind the wheel of his car. He tried to stop the thief but the thief took off, had an accident just a block or so away and totally destroyed the car.

The Italian mans insurance company refused to pay for the damamged car as the owner had not taken proper precautions.

There was a court case and the court just ruled the other day that the insurance company did NOT have to pay for the vehicle damage as the owner of the car "participated" in the problem due to his carelessness. The article said this would now be true for all similar cases in Italy. I imagine the insurance companies are smiling!

So I guess Italians better start taking more care with their vehicles, lol.

LoveItaly, your story and P M's really should make us all think. Don't cut any corners and make sure we look carefully for signs - and then read them!

In this day & age, and with the prevalence of drugs & the crimes that go along with them, no one anywhere should sleep with the door unlocked or windows open.

No place is safe from the above.

I would respectfully disagree, but very respectfully.

bear 900

A better deal is to wire a radio into the motion detector. Then when a bandit closes the circuit the radio blares.

bobbrad, that reminds me. A neighbor in the mountains has their next* house spot set up and have built a 2 stall garage with apartment above. They park their very expensive RV and boat there when they aren't in the Keys.

They have a radio set up "somehow" on a motion detector so if you are walking around the hilltop the radio comes on. Maybe it's connected to the light with a motion detector? Don't know how it works, but it does give the impression that someone may be there.

* This will be there 4th home in the area.