I take it everyone is familiar with this rumour, that if your car is equipped with an RF keyfob for unlocking the door you can remotely unlock your vehicle from miles away by pointing the remote at a mobile phone and having the person receiving the call hold their phone near the door.

Now my admittedly patch grasp of the science involved is inclined to call bullsh*t on this one for reasons that seem perfectly obvious to me, but its just reared its ugly head on another forum I frequent where someone who supposedly works for the AA has tested it and it works (allegedly).

I was wondering if anyone else had debated this one previously and what your thoughts were? Or if Im being a belligerent idiot and it does in fact work from your own experience (although I still cant fathom why it would).

nope, doesnt work... phone mic/speakers dont work on those frequencies...

saw a program about it on TV, they tested a load of different phones and a lot of different key-fobs/cars and couldnt make it work....



however... if youre a bit out of range to unlock your car, try sticking the key fob to your temple... extends it a bit (but not loads)

Mythbusters and others have busted this many times over.

Nexus, Im afraid Mythbusters has never and will never be properly capable of proving or disproving anything, its just as terrible as Brainiac when it comes to bad science.

One thing that annoys me about these urban legends is that seemingly intelligent individuals will come and tell you that its true. Not only will they tell you that its true, theyll tell you that they tested it under fantastic conditions. Are there really that many decent, switched on individuals who are turned into compulsive liars who buy into their own fantasies when it comes to urban legends?

I just cant fathom how this one can possibly be true at all.

Quote from: Chris HNexus, Im afraid Mythbusters has never and will never be properly capable of proving or disproving anything, its just as terrible as Brainiac when it comes to bad science.

Im no scientist but when they proved it was possible to drive a car up a ramp into the back of a moving lorry the results were pretty conclusive......  

Quote from: Chris HNexus, Im afraid Mythbusters has never and will never be properly capable of proving or disproving anything, its just as terrible as Brainiac when it comes to bad science.

I beg to differ. Im not saying Mythbusters is solid, but rather its not as bad as Brainiac, which is flawed through and through, to the point Im sure most of their stuff (explosions and the likes) are not what they say they are.

Mythbusters at least tries, and doesnt really hide things behind special effects etc.

But yeah, often their tests fall short, but the same can be said for most research, where 100% of angles on a topic are never covered. The Robin hood splitting arrow test comes to mind, as I know its possible as my dad did it years ago at the Archery club!

Quote from: Chris HNexus, Im afraid Mythbusters has never and will never be properly capable of proving or disproving anything, its just as terrible as Brainiac when it comes to bad science.

One thing that annoys me about these urban legends is that seemingly intelligent individuals will come and tell you that its true. Not only will they tell you that its true, theyll tell you that they tested it under fantastic conditions. Are there really that many decent, switched on individuals who are turned into compulsive liars who buy into their own fantasies when it comes to urban legends?

I just cant fathom how this one can possibly be true at all.

Time and time again, (latest redit interview as an example) the mythbusters team will admit due to budget and time that their experiments are not 100%, what they do do though is go back and re-do things with new information or cover any questions raised by viewers and they do and found different results and stated so.
In this case using a few mobile phones and cars and trying it on video at different distances with none of them working is enough to show - no it does not work. Besides we have had this discussion on the forums not to long ago with people going into detail about the signals etc. Old old maybe possible not not likely, new ones  - no.

What is True is if you go past the range of the key and then put it to your head it will amplify the signal and work (also discussed on the forums before) and shown in a few places like Top Gear.

Does it amplify the signal or just reduce ground based interference by raising it though?

I didnt realise this had already been discussed on the forums; apologies for that. I did try a search but it didnt bring anything up, if youve got a link to the original thread Id like to read over it when time allows.

The old Analogue phones could do this, but the newer digitals never could.  I used to stick my fob next to the Motarola TAC and click the door shut, but the Ericsson I had straight after on 2g Digital didnt do it.