Originally Posted by Mantid

So far as I am able to tell by experiment, done after the following story, locking the comfort access fob inside a Clubman S can occur only if the passenger door is the only door open, then locking the doors by pressing the button on the fob and placing the fob inside the vehicle, followed of course by shutting the locked door. Who'd be dumb enough to do that? Well, it can be done by accident by a very smart person.

My daughter was visiting from out of state with her 9 month old daughter who is still in a car seat. She's been here before and driven the Clubman, but only knows the basics about the car, not that knowing any more would have helped. One night, she had driven to visit a girlfriend in town. The car seat is rear facing in the back seat and, upon leaving with her soft sided purse slung over her shoulder (and under her arm) and the keys in the purse, she unlocked the doors by pressing the button on the door handle on the passenger side, opened the passenger and club doors and was struggling to get her fussing infant arranged in the car seat. Her purse around her shoulder was constantly interfering so she tossed it onto the floor in front of the passenger seat.

With her daughter finally arranged in the car seat, she shut the club door and the passenger door. The car instantaneously beeped that it was locked, and so it was. Not only that, the car is fitted with a factory alarm and with her daughter squirming in the car seat, she set off the interior motion detector almost immediately and all hell broke loose. Shortly after that, we received a panicked phone call to rush a key over - fortunately less than 10 minutes away.

The fob cannot be locked inside the vehicle under any scenario I can create except at the open front passenger door, if it is the only door open, by either (1) pressing the lock button on the fob if you are outside the car -- which clicks the locks down with no beep or blinking lights other than the silent red l.e.d. on the top of the tachometer, or (2) if the fob is inside the car with only the passenger door open when the button is pressed, it locks the doors and beeps-blinks the lights also. If you've done either of those things and then put or leave the fob inside the car and close the passenger door, you are locked out. (If you try the same things at the driver's door or at the barn doors, the car will not lock.)

The only thing we can imagine is that the lock button on the fob in her crowded purse was accidentally pressed while she was struggling with her daughter while she was outside the car trying to get her daughter in and she didn't hear or notice it had clicked the locks down before she shut the door.

I'm happy to report there do not seem to be any outward signs that her daughter is emotionally scarred for life and she didn't seem to be freaked out by the car the next time she was put in it. It probably helped that, after the alarm stopped, her mother sang every nursery rhyme known to humanity, with gestures (think itsy bitsy spider), to her through the window until the second fob arrived. It was fortunate it was at night and we were close. I can imagine a scenario in 100+ heat in the daytime here in Phoenix (which equates to at least 140 degrees in a closed car), with no one close to bring another fob. (The instruction in this part of the country, of course, would be to break out a window immediately unless it was next door to a locksmith's shop.)

Now, if German engineers can keep every other door on the vehicle from accidentally locking and, in the case of the barn doors, make them additionally pop open with the car beeping and lights blinking simultaneously four times when the front doors are otherwise locked and the fob is in the car, they ought to be able to include the passenger door in that engineering feat. Wouldn't ya think? Go figure.