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Comment by xiphias2 | Hacker News Reader

It's said to see Uber go, I really liked using it in Colombia (taxis as well, when it was more comfortable for me).

I just wish that 20 year old cars would be banned from being used as Uber/Taxi cars there.

A taxi tried to rob me in Santa Marta, but luckily the girl I was with knew that if the driver asks me to lock my door and leaves the front right door open, it's a sign that he wants to rob us.

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>asks me to lock my door and leaves the front right door open, it's a sign that he wants to rob us.

How does that work?

Probably by using the child lock you can't get out the back but someone else can come in the front and stick you up.

OH, man I hadn't thought of that good point.

If it was a child lock, why did the driver need to ask to lock the door?

20 year old cars did not have electronic child lock, this is how the mechanic child lock worked

Yes, but that was typically a difficult to access switch, not something you'd easily locate in a strange car. If the driver wanted to use the child lock, they'd just use it without telling the passengers (they would find out only after closing the door).

A difficult to access switch yeah, but then some cars required you to also lock that door from the inside to activate it.

Child lock isn’t electronic, it’s a mechanica switch you can only access when the door is open that prevents you from opening the door from the inside of the car. Locking the doors does nothing, if the door is going to open it’ll automatically unlock if you pull the handle from the inside.

That's not how my old car (Mondeo 97) works.

I see in the US requirements that the rear side door lock has to disable both the exterior and interior handles. Odd.

It's probably a sign that whatever reason the taxi driver used to get you to lock the door, it isn't really the actual issue. Nobody would leave the doors closer to themselves open if they had legitimate concerns.

> A taxi tried to rob me in Santa Marta, but luckily the girl I was with knew that if the driver asks me to lock my door and leaves the front right door open, it's a sign that he wants to rob us.

I'm curious, what happened next?

Nothing special, after he locked the child lock, we unlocked it, jumped out, and found another taxi. He wanted to rob us with a friend of his, not alone. Also I already knew that it's not worth going to the police, as they prefer not to do anything.

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