I do not know enough to answer this question, but nobody else seems interested, so here are some thoughts.

The problem you are talking about has to be mediated at the machine language level by the Operating System.

If it is not being done automatically by Access or the OS, then you have to do research and find an API call or use some special syntax to Lock a record (or the file) and/or query for the existence of a lock before attempting to edit the record.

On most systems I have worked on, there was a Query-and-lock conditional which either gave you access (and locked the object) or else indicated that the record/file was in use.