TWO police vans were among dozens of cars immobilised after key fobs mysteriously stopped working in a Scottish town.
Motorists around Jedburgh High Street in the Scottish Borders were stranded for up to eight hours last week due to the strange incident.
And some customers at the local CO-OP carpark were left standing around with bags of shopping waiting for emergency breakdown to arrive.
One local claims that vehicles at the local police station had been experiencing the same problem.
Some theories from those affected have included the possibility that Russian jets might have been in the area, blocking the fobs signal.
However the mystery surrounding the temporary black spot is still unknown.
Bongate Garage owner, Jim Oddy, 46, said: “We only had a couple of people in with issues but when we went to the CO-OP car park there were a few people waiting on RAC and other breakdown help.
“From what I hear, quite a few people were affected. People were experiencing it from about dinnertime and right up until about 8pm.
“I’ve never heard what caused it but something must have been blocking the signal or interfering. It’s still a mystery.
“Most people couldn’t unlock them or the car wouldn’t start and some people were just coming in looking for new batteries.”
Initially some motorists thought thieves could be responsible, using small hand held jammers which allows them to get into cars without having to break windows.
The device, usually costing as little as £50, blocks the electronic signal sent by the owner’s key to the car.
But other theorists say it could simply be interference from radio wave frequencies.
Len Wyse, 64, said: “We’ve not had any incidents since then and at the time we thought it might have been a jammer.
“I tried to open the doors of my car, and it just wouldn’t open.
“The day after I went into the police the officer said they had had a few people in about it and was told that two of their vans had the same problem.
“There must have been in the region of around 20 to 30 cars affected.
“It affected pretty much from the police station to the CO-OP.
Dodgy
“The other thing is, you need to think about people with pacemakers or things like that, would it have affected them?”
Jedburgh residents took to Facebook to speculate over what they believed could have caused the signal block.
Sara Farquharson wrote: “Something dodgy is happening with central locking of cars down town.
“Some kind of interference is stopping it from working. I thought it was my battery, but it turns out I’m not the only one and it’s working fab up at house.
“I hope it’s not some kind of scam.”
Nicola Beck said: “I need to apologise to my baby. I blamed him for sooking my car keys and breaking it.”
