KY drivers should ignore the “penny in the car door” scare tactics

It hasn’t even been a week since I posted an article about water bottles being placed on car tires and what that means for your safety. I wrote about it because it is a silly myth with no evidence that there is any real danger. And it looks like someone who read the article decided to have a little fun with me.

No, I’m not worried. It’s obviously a joke (made by an unknown person, which is fine); the myth is debunked; And even if it were true, the bottle is on my mirror, not my tire. I’m always up for a bit of humor.

Fast forward to a few hours ago and THIS Facebook post:

When she asked, I thought I would check it out since I had never heard of this little piece of folklore before. And to be honest, I approached my search with great skepticism. Make a fool of me once and so on.

Well, I started by clicking on the suggested link to avokaddo.com and it explained that the car would be easier to steal if you put a coin in the passenger door. Here too I was already skeptical. So next on the agenda was a trip to Snopes, the myth-busting website that has solved a number of “cases” over the years. They turned to Caliber Collision Repair in Lindenhurst, NY and put an end to the myth:

When we described the rumor, the employee laughed and explained that car door locks can’t actually be disabled this way. He said that on most current vehicle models there is no way to pinch a coin, and that even on models with unintentional “coin slots,” the key fob locking mechanism would not be disrupted by the coin pinching shown.

It sounds to me like there should be a Facebook group that brings together all of this scaremongering and exposes every single one of it at once.

Social media can be so tiring.