You too. For sure, I remember when I got an 07 Prius, and we started talking about this stuff, and there was a lot of urban legends and myths.

That being said, while electricity obeys the laws of physics, MVA/MVCs throws a wild card into the equation. I err on the side of caution... "Why am I cutting this cable if the vehicle is powered down and stabilized?"

Yup. It's easy to pull out the trusty center punch and shatter the side glass when you're amped up on adrenaline trying to get to the patient, but as my Chief says: "First try the door handle." That usually works.

Makes me think of Terminator 2, when JC teaches T to flip the sunshade for keys instead of mashing the ignition key hole.

That in turn makes me think about that - was it common during those days to do that, store the keys there? Perhaps for shared service vehicles?

This is a Hollywood thing where writers in Hollywood don't know how the normal world works: storing the keys under the sunvisor is a thing that is done with studio vehicles in studio lots because the car changes hands a lot and so keeping the keys in it just makes sense.

It might've been common in a few American cities Hollywood-adjacent post-WW2 as well, but the accepted explanation is essentially that it's Hollywood being Hollywood - probably that it's a rite of passage as a junior team member to be unable to find the keys and then have someone show you they're in the "obvious" place.

Though I suspect at this point it's a writing shortcut more then anything else: we all know it's a movie, in movie's this happens, and in the plot in that moment you don't want to deal with "can these characters start this car".

> and in the plot in that moment you don't want to deal with "can these characters start this car".

yet that's always the most implausible part of the story. Even as a kid, I remember asking "are we the only people who take the key out of the car when we leave? everyone we see on TV seems to leave their keys in the car". If character A just took their damn keys with them... movie would have been over 20 minutes earlier!

And... in murder mysteries... or TV sitcoms... if someone just had a working cell phone, the "communication problem" (misunderstanding or missing) that's at the heart of 90% of plots would be removed and the show would be over. Would definitely make the writers have to work harder.