Baltimore sues Hyundai, Kia over spike in car thefts

Well maybe tell me a single car model where the door cannot be taken off and a single source outside of yourself who claims this as an anti-theft feature.

> if you disagree with that then we have to agree to disagree.

I agree with you that welding the hinge of a door to the chassis would lower its repairability. I disagree that it would make it less likely to be stolen. Cars are not stolen by people walking off with their doors. Assuming that there is some means of ingress and egress enabling normal users to regularly enter the vehicle, that is the doors are not completely welded shut, thiefs will use that.

If you are making the point that a vehicle completely welded shut would be less repairable, and also less likely to be stolen I guess I have to agree with that. For some reason I don’t predict it to be a comercial success though.

Common vehicle anti-theft features include immobilisers, steering locks, coded key fobs, car alarms, kill switches. I don’t see that you have shown that these techniques make cars less repairable.

> how about you just not buy kia.

Consider it done.

> why people want to involve the government in everything is just beyond me

I can explain this part. People get their car stolen and they call the police to report it. They expect that the police will expend resources to find it and punish the thieves. Many in among these very comments have expressed that sentiment. That is where the government gets in the picture.

Or people fall victim of some other crime. Like they have a hit and run traffic accident, or someone smashes into their shop window with a car and drives away with stolen goods, or any number of other crimes. They report it to the police who investigates and realises that the criminals used a stolen car to facilitate their crime. Because a ready source of easily stolen cars is not just a headache for the people whose car have gone missing. It undermines the security and safety of others too. This is an other way how the government got involved.

Are you with me so far? Do you agree that people can and should report to the police when crimes have been commited against them?

Assuming that we are on the same page so far. Or at least that you are seeing my point even if you are not agreeing: what happens next is that the police looks at their statistics and sees that many of these crimes have their root in the shoddy safety practices of a particular car manufacturer. They see that it costs them a lot of money too. So they go and ask their own government paid lawyer and ask them if they can do something about this. And presumably said lawyer told them that yes they can do something about it, they can sue the car manufacturer for public nuisance.

That is how people reporting crimes leads to the police noticing a common theme in the crimes and that leads to the city suing the vehicle manufacturer. I hope that answers your question about how and why people got the government involved in this issue.

Think about it this way: no one forces a kid to jump into a pool and drown, but if you have a pool without a fence completely surrounding it and the kid does just that, you are liable for the damages by creating an attractive nuisance. Hyundai created the situation of easily stolen cars by not "building the fence around their pool".

In Baltimore, Maryland, you cannot vote while in prison. But you can once you get out. Felony conviction or no.

(I honestly don't think that the population with felony convictions are significant factors in elections, but they can and do vote.)

Probably fair, according to the anecdata collected in my travels in life so far. This view of the US seems common, almost consensus.

> he thinks they are far too low and want them increased more

This part, I don't think is typical (or even widespread) among Americans, and I don't see it expressly endorsed by ravensfan69 - seems like you are presuming it.

It seems to me that, by very far, the common American sentiment is, "our justice system has failed, and the focus on incarceration has made crime worse instead of better."

On the other hand, many types of crime - especially violent crime - have fallen in my lifetime in the US, in concert with much of the rest of the world.

But yeah, we Americans don't like prisons and we know damn well that our state is just building them as an end-around to achieve a plantation economy. We're not stupid.