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Baltimore sues Hyundai, Kia over spike in car thefts

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Re: Baltimore sues Hyundai, Kia over spike in car thefts

#561

Post by tinus_hn »

ravensfan69 wrote: post #139

I live in Baltimore, in a pretty "good" part of town where most of the young professionals and Hopkins hospital staff live. I know 4 different people who've had cars stolen in the past 24 months. In 3 of these cases the perpetrators were teenagers, and in 2 of these cases they brandished guns. Only one of these thefts were Hyundai/Kia-related, and the thief punched my buddy in the face during the theft. Many others I…

It could be intended as a distraction but the ease at which it is possible to steal those cars quite arguably does not meet any standard of care, and Kia clearly agrees, otherwise they wouldn’t be scrambling for workarounds and solutions.

Re: Baltimore sues Hyundai, Kia over spike in car thefts

#562

Post by tinus_hn »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #552
strix_varius wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You stole a deadly vehicle and put people's lives in danger with it. Multiple times. You will be tried as an adult and the minimum sentence is 5 years." Why is this not the obvious solution? (not as if you could single-handedly enact it, of course, but why isn't the city's leadership doing so?)

This used to be the "solution", except all it did was act as a gladiator academy that turned out more hardened criminals after 5 years. Do that every year and every year you are just working a machine to create crime. Turns out that just putting people in jail doesn't make society safer.

Turns out patting people on the back and tearfully nodding to the stories about their sad youth doesn’t make society safer either. Ultimately life just isn’t fair and people do need to be induced to take responsibility for themselves.

Re: Baltimore sues Hyundai, Kia over spike in car thefts

#563

Post by tzs »

atonse wrote: post #290
henryfjordan wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot make something that you know will cause a nuisance. You cannot, for instance, sell fireworks only between 1-3am in the middle of a neighborhood and act surprised when the neighbors are mad at you because kids are setting them off all night. It was absolutely predictable that these cars would be stolen and that the police would have to deal with the fallout. Just because there's no explicit law does not mea…

is there evidence that car thefts are higher due to Kia, or due to lax enforcement? I suspect it’s a bit of both and Baltimore is trying to pin it all on anyone else but them. Not making excuses for Kia. They should absolutely get penalties for taking shortcuts. But I feel that higher insurance premiums and a bad reputation would take care of it. And people won’t buy their cars.

> is there evidence that car thefts are higher due to Kia, or due to lax enforcement?

Yes. In numerous cities the car theft rate has gone way up in the last couple of years, in some doubling or more, with something like 95% of the increase being thefts of these particular Kia and Hyundai models.

Re: Baltimore sues Hyundai, Kia over spike in car thefts

#564

Post by jaclaz »

aardvarkr wrote: post #8

Lots of comments that didn’t read the article so here’s a good excerpt on why there’s a lawsuit. Baltimore’s lawsuit says the companies “failed to keep up with industry standards,” and claim it was a result of business decisions made to reduce costs and boost profits “notwithstanding decades of academic literature and research supporting the deterrent effects” of anti-theft technology. “The dramatically increased rat…

In EU immobilizers were mandated in 1998, 2001 in Australia, 2007 Canada.

I.e. it wasn't like the manufacturers decided that they were useful, they were forced to introduce them by the national or pan-national authorities.

If the US didn't mandate them, the reference to industry standards is - at best - a very feeble one, the city of Baltimore could - maybe - sue the NHTSA

Re: Baltimore sues Hyundai, Kia over spike in car thefts

#565

Post by mindslight »

pb7 wrote: post #330
kevviiinn wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I looked up "police state" and got this: >a totalitarian state controlled by a political police force that secretly supervises the citizens' activities Can you explain how the US is all of those things?

I thought GP was being ridiculous and hyperbolic when I first read their comment, but on second thought it's more technically correct than not. Regulating what substances people can use to affect their own bodies is totalitarian, as it presupposes a state/societal ownership interest of individuals' bodies. Mass surveillance plus parallel construction most certainly constitutes secret supervision. And any attempt to reform the system is met with a strong lobby from police and prison guards, who have long ago succumbed to Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy. It's not the stereotypical power-trickles-down-from-a-small-cabal-to-control-society, but rather an analog in the framework of inverted totalitarianism.

Of course there are different degrees, and throwing out these characterizations in a thread about even more totalitarian societies would be inappropriate whataboutism. But as domestic societal critique they do have some truth.

Re: Baltimore sues Hyundai, Kia over spike in car thefts

#566

Post by tzs »

g42gregory wrote: post #245

Maybe this is naive, but wouldn't the solution be not to sell the cars in Baltimore? It's not that large of a market and there are local car manufacturers there as well. Maybe require in the user agreement not to drive to Baltimore either, similar to the rental car agreements that don't allow for the cars to be driven to Mexico?

> Maybe this is naive, but wouldn't the solution be not to sell the cars in Baltimore? It's not that large of a market and there are local car manufacturers there as well.

Baltimore may not be a large market, but there are also several other cities suing, and at least 18 state attorney generals have gotten involved. That's a much larger market than Baltimore.

Re: Baltimore sues Hyundai, Kia over spike in car thefts

#567

Post by kwere »

jimbob45 wrote: post #250
pySSK wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The source I remember was that China’s waiting lists for organ transplants were extremely low. If you have a refutation of that specific point, I would be very interested to read what you have to write.

and china is the least country of voluntary donations of organs in the world.

According to the statistics, the deceased organ donation rate in China currently is only about 0.6/1,000,000 China citizens, one of the lowest in the world. The sad truth is that there are about 1 to 1.5 million people in China needing organ transplant every year and only 10,000 people can get a new organ successfully[0]

[0]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4820883/

Re: Baltimore sues Hyundai, Kia over spike in car thefts

#568

Post by jaclaz »

bombcar wrote: post #126
softwaredoug wrote: post #3

Are there resources to know what car brands are most vulnerable to the exploits car thieves are using?

You may be able to find insurance reports on "most stolen vehicles" or similar.

Yep, but those will represent the "most desirable" cars, not the "easiest" ones.

Those lists (with some few exceptions for top cars) usually reflect the "most sold" or "most common" cars, as these represent the largest "market" for spare parts.

Re: Baltimore sues Hyundai, Kia over spike in car thefts

#569

Post by tzs »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #311

How about changing the law to require safety features. More importantly, this is a strange lawsuit. Bicycles get stolen all the time, are bicycle manufacturers going to get sued by cities?

> Bicycles get stolen all the time, are bicycle manufacturers going to get sued by cities?

If bicycle thefts doubled in dozens of cities all around the country over a couple years or so, and the doubling was almost entirely due to people stealing a couple particular Schwinn models that had been designed in a way that makes them massively easier to steal compared to everything else and it is not obvious to purchasers that this is so, then yes, Schwinn would probably get sued.

Re: Baltimore sues Hyundai, Kia over spike in car thefts

#570

Post by shjake »

dotancohen wrote: post #533
kooshball wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Drug Offenses are nearly half the prison population this is not true. your data is federal only. most prisoners are at state prisons. drug offense is about 1/5 of total. source https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html

A reduction of 20% is most certainly significant.

What proportion of them are in prison for possession of small/personal amounts?

And is imprisoning people who are smuggling/distributing hard and potentially very dangerous drugs really that controversial?

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