Baltimore sues Hyundai, Kia over spike in car thefts • Hacker News Board

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

#571

Post by kwere » Sat, May 13, 2023, 1:39 PM UTC

psd1 wrote: post #534

tomp wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> openly anti-communist organization You say that like it's a bad thing. Most organisations worldwide, are openly anti-communist, except those that explicitly support dictatorship and human rights abuse. I guess that's a good thing.

My employer is headquartered in the US and has presence in about 30 countries. I don't recall them taking a position on communism. I don't understand why Americans still cling to this villain. It's 2023, the USSR collapsed 30 years ago.

there are still five openly communist countries left in the world: North Korea, Mainland China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos.

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

#572

Post by shjake » Sat, May 13, 2023, 1:41 PM UTC

prmoustache wrote: post #265

lowkey_ wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High incarceration rate makes sense when the US has a high crime rate. I don't understand why anyone thinks incarceration rate should not be correlated or would not be correlate to crime rate. Incarcerating criminals isn't the issue, having so many criminals is the issue.

Apparently incarceration and death penalty do not really work as a deterrent in this country. Is it because most of the violent crimes are related to drug addiction?

Well be fair the overall decrease in crime rates over the last several decades seems to be somewhat correlated with increasing incarceration rates..

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

#573

Post by jaclaz » Sat, May 13, 2023, 1:45 PM UTC

klodolph wrote: post #26

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #4

Imagine if a city sued homeowners because it’s their fault for calling the police after a break-in, because they used a deadbolt that failed the LockPickingLawyer. This is about equally as sane. Yes, yes, I know that Hyundai and Kia vehicles are easy pickings, but they talk as though “those vehicles are easy to steal, so those teenagers, they just felt so compelled to…” Nobody forces somebody to steal a car. If anti-…

LockPickingLawyer is highly skilled, and can defeat locks that most others can’t. This is like selling one of those old Kryptonite locks that could be defeated with a Bic pen. At that point, the lock is truly defective, and should be pulled from the market. Your lock should require something more than a readily-available, vaguely key-shaped object to operate—so if you can operate the lock with a Bic pen (like the old…

This USB nonsense is misleading, it is nothing like the Kryptonite+Bic pen.

You:

1) need to enter the vehicle (lockpick, smashed window, etc.)

2) break the ignition block to remove the key cylinder

3) turn a tab underneath the cylinder with whatever you see fit (pliers)

Only coincidentally the tab fits inside a USB A connector.

Now, that the ignition block may be (or may be not) easier to break than any other one could be debated, but - unlike the Kryptonite locks - you need to break it by force.

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

#574

Post by Bran_son » Sat, May 13, 2023, 1:47 PM UTC

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…

> The US incarcerates more people than China, despite China having more than four times as many people

Homicide and incarceration rates per 100k people:

         homicide | incarceration | incarceration/homicide
  USA         6.4 |           505 |                     79
  China       0.5 |           119 |                    238
  Norway      0.6 |            55 |                     92

In other words, China incarcerates 3x as many people per homicide as the USA, and the USA homicide rate is 12.8x that of China. Homicide is used instead of/as a proxy for violent crime, because it is largely immune to bias by overpolicing or racism, which are the usual excuses to dismiss statistics. Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...

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

#575

Post by shjake » Sat, May 13, 2023, 1:59 PM UTC

carabiner wrote: post #224

pySSK wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The US has very similar camps in the form of forced labor (i.e. slavery) by prisoners. These slaves have built products in the US that many of us have used, including clothes and office furniture. They make 63 cents per hour - make no mistake, they are slaves .

Yes because murdering people and harvesting their organs is very similar to using imprisoned people as a very cheap source of labor.

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

#576

Post by scarab92 » Sat, May 13, 2023, 2:01 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #550

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…

I agree that Hyundai and Kia don't own the whole problem. But they are unusual in shipping new cars without immobilizers. And it is solely done to reduce cost. That does contribute the the problem.

Were they required to?

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

#577

Post by tyingq » Sat, May 13, 2023, 2:05 PM UTC

scarab92 wrote: post #576

tyingq wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Hyundai and Kia don't own the whole problem. But they are unusual in shipping new cars without immobilizers. And it is solely done to reduce cost. That does contribute the the problem.

Were they required to?

Not by some specific regulation, no. IANAL, but that doesn't necessarily shield you from liability when you do something that's unusual for the industry.

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

#578

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 13, 2023, 2:05 PM UTC

shuckles wrote: post #442

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…

This argument suffers from Simpson’s Paradox. While the US may have high rates of incarceration, a city like San Francisco with which I’m familiar has European rates of incarceration. In addition, you can drive down the incarceration rate by reducing sentence lengths instead of reducing conviction rates for crimes or diverting bonafide criminals from prisons into various makework social programs that do not work to k…

[deleted]

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

#579

Post by kwere » Sat, May 13, 2023, 2:06 PM UTC

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.

[flagged]

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

#580

Post by quickthrowman » Sat, May 13, 2023, 2:09 PM UTC

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #395

hoofhearted wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a little early to be drinking isn’t it? The city is suing to recover the money they spent on all the police efforts expended because Kia cut corners to reduce costs.

As someone currently in Japan, still a bit shocked how it's actually possible to leave your bike unlocked in a major city and expect to see it the next day, I do find it rediculous to blame the manufacturer for crime. Like what's next, suing a lock manufacturer for being too easy to pick (you can literally look up how to pick 99% of locks on YouTube).

> Like what's next, suing a lock manufacturer for being too easy to pick (you can literally look up how to pick 99% of locks on YouTube).

This already happened almost 20 years ago in the United States. Ingersoll Rand was sued when it was shown that their Kryptonite locks could be opened with a Bic pen. Ingersoll Rand ended up settling. [0] I will grant that actual owners of the easily picked bike lock have obvious grounds to sue, whereas in the case of municipalities suing Hyundai due to theft problems, showing that the municipality is an injured party with standing to sue Hyundai isn’t as clear.

[0] https://www.reallaw.us/2007/04/25/class_action_defense_cases...