Mother starts car with baby's tummy

[This is from the British "Daily Telegraph" - a paper, I never read, but the link was given by the "Spiegel", and since there, the story is only published in German, since you have to register, when reading the Telegraph article ... here its is:]





Mother starts car with baby's tummy
By David Derbyshire, Science Correspondent
(Filed: 03/12/2002)


A mother who was stranded when her teething baby ate a vital part of the car key managed to start the engine by pressing him close to the steering wheel.

One-year-old Oscar Webster had swallowed a pill-sized radio transponder - a coded electronic chip security device - while playing with her keys in the back of the car.

Amanda Webster, 34, thinking that her Ford Focus had broken down, called the RAC during a shopping trip near her home in west London.

Keith Scott, the patrol man sent to help, thought at first that the battery was flat.

"Then I noticed that part of the key was missing," he said. "So we looked around the car. Oscar's mother had let him play with the keys while she loaded the shopping.

"All of a sudden it dawned on me. Mrs Webster told me that he had been sucking the key and we realised he might have swallowed part of it." Assuming that the transponder should work no matter how unusual its surroundings, Mr Scott, 37, suggested placing Oscar close to the steering column as his mother inserted the key.

"She sat him on her lap and made sure that his tummy was pressed up against the wheel. She turned the key and the car started."

Transponders were first inserted in many car keys in the mid-1990s. Usually the device is hidden in the plastic handle. But in some models it takes the form of a cylinder under a detachable cap.

Oscar was none the worse for the experience and, when nature took its course, the chip was recovered still in working order.

Mr Scott, a patrolman for six years, said: "This was the oddest breakdown I have been to. I don't know how I came up with the idea.

"Oscar was still playing with the keys when I got there and seemed to think it was funny. I guess this was the ultimate in car security."