With these tips you can easily find your parked car again

Rien Mertens lost his car for eleven days, and on Monday afternoon he received the good news that the car had been found. This was thanks to the help of a reporter from RTV Utrecht. In the end, his car was just parked in a parking garage. But how do you remember where you left your car?

• Save your parking location in your phone. Google Maps has a special function for that. With one push of a button you can accurately record the coordinates of the location of your car to within a few meters. Apple has a similar feature. Please note: this does not work well in parking garages. Then write down which floor you are on and in which part of the garage. Some garages also have numbered spaces so you can quickly find your car.
• Use a so-called airtag or smarttag. This is a small device, the size of a key ring, that uses GPS or Bluetooth to indicate in an app where something is located. Many cars have already been recovered with the tags. Even better: in New York the police handed them out in the fight against car thefts. Combined with your phone, you can track the location of your car thanks to the tag trace. The range is often no more than a hundred meters, but you can let others join the search via the ‘lost mode’ function. This works for both Android and Apple.
• Are the above tips too difficult? Take a photo of a street sign or write down the street name. If you don’t have a smartphone, you can mark the location on a paper map.
• Using landmarks is also a useful tip. Is there a supermarket nearby or a large flat, for example? Remember those places. Then you may eventually have to look for your car, but you are already in the area. Note: Do not memorize mobile landmarks. It’s nice to know that you are now close to the fish stall, but it might leave at five o’clock.
• Share your location via WhatsApp. You can do this by typing a message to yourself or a family member and then pressing the paperclip. Then you can share your location. Do you have an iPhone? Then click on the plus sign at the bottom.
• Whenever there is space, always park in a fixed spot. Then you already know in which zone of a parking lot or in which part of the city you should look.
• Use your car key. You must already be near your car, but with modern cars you can track your car at the touch of a button. The lights often turn on or the car gives a short beep. A bizarre trick, but hold your key near a bottle of water or near your head for a stronger signal. This amplifies the electromagnetic waves.
• Choose a brightly colored car. Gray, white and black cars dominate the street scene. Buy a bright green or red car. They are much more noticeable in the street and so you will find your car sooner.
• Or you hire a reporter from RTV Utrecht…