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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

#651

Post by porkbeer »

zarzavat wrote: post #470
matthewdgreen wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you’ve had a gun pointed at you from a car, taken down the license plate, then been told there’s nothing they can do because the car was stolen —- you’ll realize that car theft isn’t some individual problem. We’ve had the tech to solve this problem for decades, but car manufacturers decided to save a few bucks.

The easy accessibility of guns in America is not the fault of Korean car manufacturers either. What you describe is not something that people in most developed countries have to worry about.

The accessability of guns is not part of hotwiring kias, or even choosing to use them for crime. Gun ownership and crime are not strongly linked.

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

#652

Post by porkbeer »

thewebcount wrote: post #503
jackvalentine wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We’ve had tech to solve this problem” isn’t the same statement as “tech to make it impossible to start a car without the owner’s consent, even when the attacker has hardware access”. Engine immobilisers cut out all the easy “jam a USB stick in there” attacks, The Kia Boys do not exist in Australia where they’ve been mandatory for 20 years. Lesson here for Americans - if you want something like this it has to be legi…

Case in point: My father was an EE at GM in the 70s. He told me one time that the company knew of a problem in some model from that era where when you made a hard left turn with the air conditioning on, the engine would stall. Fixing it would have increased the cost of each car by 15 cents, so they chose not to fix it. These models were later recalled. I don’t know whether the cost of the recall was more than the cos…

Im a pretty big car nut, and GM is known for some sketchy stuff, but this is BS.

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

#653

Post by porkbeer »

akudha wrote: post #549
lstodd wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I had one with an immobiliser. By the third time it went nuts and blocked me from starting the car it took me about 3 minutes to reset it, and the tools were already kept in the trunk for just this. Now I live in a country where it's normal to leave cars with open windows and even doors in the street so that they don't overheat in the sun. Sometimes even with keys dangling. No immobilisers necessary -- only dec…

Woah, where do you live, that you can leave the keys in the car with windows/doors open? Not being sarcastic, genuinely curious

I live in such a place. And have lived in others too. Most are away from cities. Rural south, midwest, even a small western costal city. If I feel compelled to lock my doors when I leave my home, I dont feel welcome in the place I live. Worse, are people who live where they would literally lock themselves inside their own home. I wouldnt wish that level of fear and insecurity on anyone. I fear for our future that this seems to have become not just common, but default behavior.

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

#654

Post by dionidium »

TuringNYC wrote: post #461
dionidium wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Furthermore, state law prevents Baltimore (and only Baltimore) from annexing suburbs to increase the tax base St. Louis is the other major independent city. The state doesn't restrict its ability to annex suburbs, but it hardly matters. It doesn't happen, anyway, and it almost certainly wouldn't in Baltimore, either. Who wants either city's problems?

One case where I can see a suburb welcoming an annexation is when pension problems get out of hand. There are hundreds of small municipalities which have promised policemen, firemen, and others huge pensions. Many of these pensions are underfunded and only survive by "borrowing" from the budget and/or "borrowing" from future generations' pension assets. It is unclear whether the PBGC ( https://www.pbgc.gov/ ) will ba…

Some of the smaller municipalities surrounding St. Louis have recently dissolved, for various reasons, but they're taken over by the surrounding County, not absorbed by the City.

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

#655

Post by dang »

Convolutional wrote: post #185

I should point out to those not from the US that this is how Americans view the US. There is a lot of crime, the government and NGOs are on the side of the criminals etc. It is up voted to the top as well, with agreement in the replies, this is how Americans view the US. The US incarcerates more people than China, despite China having more than four times as many people, but the view obviously is the incarceration ra…

We detached this generic tangent subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35920712.

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

#656

Post by dang »

alphanullmeric wrote: post #347
leothecool wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the US is prosecuting and incarcerating broad swathes of innocent people. There's about half a million people in jail right now who haven't been convicted of a crime. Some of them are innocent, for sure.

[flagged]

Personal attacks are not allowed here, so please don't do that.

Also, please don't use HN for ideological battle, regardless of what you're battling for or against. It looks like you've been doing that a lot, unfortunately. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

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

#657

Post by slowhand09 »

qchris wrote: post #396
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…

As another person currently residing in Baltimore (and who just re-signed a lease to stay in a city I've enjoyed living in), it's worth pointing out that when people talk about "systemic" issues in policing and law enforcement, they're talking about things like the fact that for the last, oh, literally 162 years, Baltimore PD has not been administrated within the City of Baltimore, but instead by state lawmakers in t…

I'll cherry-pick one line. "There's a lot of fundamental issues, ranging from food deserts to lack of public transportation among the poorer areas."

Food deserts in Baltimore? Like the Mondowmin Mall that was destroyed by residents during the Freddie Gray riots? And the companies that tried to rebuild and provide in the neighborhood, only to be robbed constantly to the point that companies gave up for not being able to guarantee workers'safety?

And public transport, in areas where cabbies fear to go, buses take hours, and electric scooters and bikes are routinely dumped in the harbor? Vandalism runs rampant. Bus seats are sliced open, gang members threaten riders, etc.

I hate what poor Baltimore has become. Yuppie white-collar Baltimore thrives, just not in these areas. 35 yrs ago I love going to Balt to play tourist. Nice people, Inner Harbor, restaurants, stores... Employed so many people. Corrupt city government at all levels, corrupt cops, and promotion of a victim mentality are some of the things that brought it down. Baltimore is screwed in general, by its own actions.

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

#658

Post by qchris »

slowhand09 wrote: post #657
qchris wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another person currently residing in Baltimore (and who just re-signed a lease to stay in a city I've enjoyed living in), it's worth pointing out that when people talk about "systemic" issues in policing and law enforcement, they're talking about things like the fact that for the last, oh, literally 162 years, Baltimore PD has not been administrated within the City of Baltimore, but instead by state lawmakers in t…

I'll cherry-pick one line. "There's a lot of fundamental issues, ranging from food deserts to lack of public transportation among the poorer areas." Food deserts in Baltimore? Like the Mondowmin Mall that was destroyed by residents during the Freddie Gray riots? And the companies that tried to rebuild and provide in the neighborhood, only to be robbed constantly to the point that companies gave up for not being able…

I'm not going to try to defend every bad thing about the city; as I clearly stated, it's not all sunshine and roses. But let's look a the public transport issues you names. Again, we can look how the state government under the former Governor Hogan persistently re-directed funding away from things like improving existing light rail or adding new lines[1][2] that would have benefited poorer, usually Black communities, and instead moved that money towards road maintenance or expansion further out into the state in wealthier, whiter ones.

A good example of this is the East-West Red Line project, which would have been the only cross-city rail line that didn't go North-South among the already well-serviced neighborhoods, with a lot of that money getting spent re-vitalizing those areas. But once again, this isn't a cause for dismissal--the new Governor Moore has made reviving the Red Line project possible again[3], which (if it happens), could be a huge boon for the city. Imagine NYC without the MTA or Boston without the MBTA--almost unthinkable. These kind of projects, which finally have the potential to become un-stalled, offer hope of moving Baltimore in that direction.

[1] https://washingtonmonthly.com/2022/06/20/larry-hogan-purple-...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/fiv...

[3] https://www.wbaltv.com/article/reviving-baltimore-red-line-p...

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

#659

Post by shuckles »

pedrosorio wrote: post #644
shuckles wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t have to be a major voting block to be a consistently consequential swing vote. California is a major voting block but its interests are rarely persuasive in federal politics because it’s never a swing vote in elections.

Logical nitpick: you argued “A does not imply B”, by providing an example of (not A, B). You need (A, not B) to make that argument.

That’s fair. The logic still holds: Ohio’s interests are over-represented in Federal politics even though it’s not major because it’s important on the margins.

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

#660

Post by shjake »

alphanullmeric wrote: post #585
shjake wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m unaware of many places in the EU where it’s socially acceptable to walk into a store take a bunch of stuff and leave without paying and without the staff or the police doing anything about it…

I mean that many europeans do not believe in the right for a victim to defend their property, ie. if they get away they get away, whereas a robber’s choices in America when the victim is armed are to comply or be forced to. And if they are caught, EU police will stick them in a cosy waterfront prison to play with iPads and eat Michelin star food, probably costing the victim more in taxes then whatever was being stole…

I do hope this is sarcasm…
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