An elderly couple in New Zealand almost died after being trapped in their new keyless car for 13 hours. Mollieanne and Brian Smith from Alexandra were confused as to how the new technology worked, and were therefore trapped inside their Mazda 3 hatchback on Guy Fawkes night.

The Smiths falsely believed that they couldn’t get out of their new car without the transponder fob. Mollieanne, 65, and Brian, 68, already got into their car parked in their garage when they remembered the transponder was left in their house. Once they were inside their vehicle, the doors automatically locked, which led them to believe they were trapped.

With the user’s manual also back at their home, the couple couldn’t find the manual override to unlock the doors. They were trapped inside the car, and their attempts to escape were futile. They tried to smash the windows with a car jack and they sounded the horn to get attention of their neighbours. However, as it was November 5, Guy Fawkes Night, no one noticed the horn due to fireworks.

As the Otago Daily Times reports, they were at last freed by their neighbours around 7:45 am. Mollieanne was found unconscious, while Brian was struggling to breathe. She spent three days in Dunstan Hospital. She was told by the emergency service that if they had spent another half hour trapped inside the car, they would have met a fatal end.

The keyless vehicle could have been opened by just pulling the handle; however, the couple did not know that. Brian said that the car salesperson made it seem that the car would not work without the transponder, which replaces the traditional key. He knows now that keyless cars have manual locks that are opened from the inside the same way as other cars.

Mollieanne claimed she had received calls from other people who shared the same experience with their keyless cars. Mazda New Zealand general manager Glenn Harris, meanwhile, insisted that the Smiths were the first to be trapped inside their keyless vehicle.

“It’s not a design flaw with the car,” he told ODT, “what we have said to the network is, with new technologies, don’t forget to show customers how to use them in their entirety [and] how to override them. There is always a manual process to override them.”