A Valet Key Vault Solution?

Recently in Jersey City and elsewhere in the US, thieves have been hitting valet parking lots and stealing expensive cars. The valet parking garage at Crystal Point, two blocks from our current place (we’re moving soon to another part of Jersey City) was hit twice recently. This is because all of the keys are in one place and they’re easy to identify, and there may be four gunmen with one holding the attendant at gunpoint, while the other three grab keys and take the cars.

The best solution we can think of is to come up with some kind of key vault, where keys are housed in individual enclosures in the vault and the enclosures all look the same so there is no way to identify the keys for a Maserati. Owners have some kind of device that emits a code that changes every couple of minutes.

You can go from cheap to expensive where the cheap solution would simply be to put each set of keys into a box and hang them in the current key box, although the valet is still at risk because the valet knows which keys are where. But it will slow thieves down because they won’t be able to quickly identify which cars they want.

The more expensive vault would eliminate the valet’s knowledge of whose keys are where, as opening the vault requires the owner’s fob.

One limitation is that some parking lots are designed to stack cars, meaning the valet would need multiple keys to retrieve someone’s car in the back of the lot. The vault could be programmed to recognize this and unlock the necessary keys (expensive solution that won’t be product-ready soon).

These are half-baked ideas but the hope is for someone to start working on solutions ASAP.