> Its a fundamentally flawed design, and it never should have made it past review.
It is a flawed design, but there’s just one problem for a lawsuit: Immobilizers are not legally required in the US. A flawed immobilizer is fine, considering there doesn’t even need to be an immobilizer.
Baltimore is suing because, yes, they are easy to steal and that makes things inconvenient for Baltimore. But no law was broken - there is no law requiring cars to be hard to steal. Thus they are trying to claim “public nuisance” instead of “negligence.”
This, in my mind, is a super slippery slope. You know parts pairing on iPhones, where you can’t swap the camera without Apple’s approval? One day there could be a carmaker or two that pairs everything from mirrors to catalytic converter to “prevent theft and fraud.” If Baltimore wins, anyone who doesn’t do that could be found liable. Just an extreme example of how this could go sideways fast.
Or let’s say two or three bike manufacturers start putting GPS systems into their bikes, to prevent theft. Can any bike manufacturer that doesn’t do that be sued in the future? I would argue, they should absolutely not be in absence of a law.