auto door locking on Fabia?

[wai]

How exactly do you lock the door next to you? Is there a individual lock button on each door?
Next, you have setup the locking so that it unlocks ALL doors when you get in. You either have to lock each door individually OR press the central locking button (you are back at the auto lock scenario!)

Bag snatchers, in general, open the passenger door and grab the bag.

So, auto-lock is no more dangerous than locking all the doors yourself.

Come to think of it, you cannot lock individual doors as there is just one door lock actuator...the master.

The bit about bag snatchers is that they generally do their dirty work when you stop at lights or in the queue at lights. The reasoning goes that by the time you have go to such a situation, you have exceeded 11 km/h and so the auto locks have activated.

Bag snatchers are not the type to overthink things. They figure that the vast majority of driver only vehicles, or vehicles that have no one in the front passengers seat are more likely than not to have say a handbag or brief case there. So when the car comes to a stop at lights, they get the door open and take whatever is on the front passenger seat. The other target is the hatch or rear doors on vans as they are rarely lockable individually. It is simply a case of lifting the hatch and taking whatever they want while you are in the driers seat and by the time you react, they are long gone.

This locking does not lock the doors so that someone inside can't get out. It just requires two pulls on the opening lever to open the door. If you are in an accident and need assistance being extracted, glass is cheap and easy to break. If you can't get the door open with two pulls, then the mechanism is probably stuck so even if unlocked you would not be able to open it.

But it is not just theft that auto locking helps prevent, it also works against car jacking. It is quite off putting for a thief to grab a door handle and see it is locked. These things are done in the shortest possible time. If your door is locked, they will go elsewhere as they don't want to knock on the glass and ask if they can rob you.

In the end it is a personal choice and an option.

P.S. I just checked the manual on my Caddy Maxi Life, and it says that when the air bags have been deployed, the central locking sees all door locks turned off.

[steveyoshi]

Fabia RS has default AUTO Lock of all doors including Hatch (Wagon Presumeably) after 15kmh. Dealer can change via the PC connection.
Press button on centre console to open, or remove key from ignition. This also unlocks the Hatch.

As for doors locked when driving, I believe that all women (and men) should lock their car once inside. Having an accident where you can not open (or that they dont open automatically) is probably less likely than having someone trying to join you.

[Transporter]

Fabia RS has default AUTO Lock of all doors including Hatch (Wagon Presumeably) after 15kmh. Dealer can change via the PC connection.
Press button on centre console to open, or remove key from ignition. This also unlocks the Hatch.

As for doors locked when driving, I believe that all women (and men) should lock their car once inside. Having an accident where you can not open (or that they dont open automatically) is probably less likely than having someone trying to join you.

The doors auto unlock when the car is in accident.

[Pugdriver]

just test drove one yesterday. (Base 77TSI, a MY 11 demo.)

It auto locks just as I want.

You don't have to "double pull" the door handle to get out. It works just like my Peugeot - when you take off, it locks the car when you hit about 10 km/h. When you stop the car and open a door from inside, it automatically unlocks all doors.

Very happy with that.

Lovely little car - looks like we will be buying one, depending on the negotiations...

[Transporter]

...and it can also be set that it unlocks only when you remove the key from the ignition. But, important thing is that it will always auto unlock all the doors prior to an accident as well as the car will do automatically some other things that it is progarmmed to do.

[steveyoshi]

The doors auto unlock when the car is in accident.

Thanks... Yep knew that... was just talking in general not specifically about Fabia.

Pretty sure most cars do that these days.

[Yao]

The auto lock function is great. As has already been said, it is not designed to keep you in, it is an "anti-hijack" and "anti-theft" function.

Even though you can open the doors from the inside, no way can they be opened from the outside. Found out today that even after opening both front doors from the inside to exit the car, the back doors will still be locked and can be opened from the outside only after unlocking all doors centrally. Picked up my daughter today from sports and she dropped her stuff on the back seat. She couldn't open the back doors from the outside when we got home.

[jerry0815]

I went back to dealer for the first check up service last week and asked them to set the auto lock when reach 20km/h and single press on the key to unlock all doors.