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Kia and Hyundai and Crime and Punishment [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-09-02

ICYMI, Farhad Manjoo had a column in The NY Times on September 1, 2023 that was rather interesting:

Manjoo begins by discussing how the crime wave in the pandemic may have spiked (despite GOP rhetoric on FOX, talk radio, etc.) But, there’s one particular exception: auto theft, and a particular kind of car as well.

..For years now, most automakers have equipped most of the cars they sell in the United States with electronic immobilizers, devices that prevent cars from starting unless they detect a radio ID code associated with the car’s rightful key. But Hyundai and Kia, which come under the same South Korean conglomerate, did not install this basic device in somewhere around nine million cars sold between 2011 and 2022. A couple of years ago, videos showing how to hotwire the vulnerable cars began to pop up online. I won’t go into details but I will say that it doesn’t require much more than a USB plug.

emphasis added

Crime statistics on auto theft are spotty, but data that is available suggest these vehicles are targeted in far greater numbers than their market share would account for.

..The resulting crime wave has clobbered American cities. “We’re hitting close to 6,000 cars that have been stolen this year alone,” Adrian Diaz, Seattle’s police chief, told me. More than a third of the cars stolen in Seattle in August were Hyundais and Kias, he said. “That’s a massive cost, not only for the victim of having a vehicle stolen,” but also in resources involved in “trying to investigate these crimes,” Diaz said. And then there are the follow-on incidents. Stolen Kias and Hyundais have been involved in numerous deadly crashes, armedrobbery sprees and other crimes around the country. “We’re recovering guns out of a lot of Kias that are stolen,” Diaz said.

What makes this interesting is that according to the article, the vulnerability can be closed with a software upgrade by the company that takes about 45 minute, and car owners get a window sticker to let would-be thieves know it. They’ve also been providing car owners with devices to secure steering wheels. But, is that enough?

Several cities are suing the companies over this problem, and there was a class-action lawsuit, currently in limbo over the amount of compensation for some owners. There have also been complaints about social media companies that have done little to nothing about numerous videos that spell out exactly how to steal these cars.

Manjoo suggests that Kia and Hyundai need to do more about this.

..The carmakers should have known they were creating unsafe products. The costs of their decision have had far-reaching effects on public safety and city resources, and there’s no telling when the thefts might abate. Kia and Hyundai, not the public, should bear the cost of their irresponsible decision to sell cars without immobilizers.

For my own part I wonder why this hasn’t been addressed the way we tackle other car safety issues, with the government mandating recalls. Manjoo in a reply to a comment says “Hyundai has not recalled the cars. They have offered a software upgrade. They have specifically declined to issue a recall because they say they have not broken a regulation, but owners and insurers dispute this.”

And why do we leave decisions like this up to corporations, to decide whether or not they’ve broken a regulation? In a reply to another comment, Manjoo noted this is not a problem in other countries because their regulations did not allow Kia and Hyundai to omit the lockout. American exceptionalism strikes again!

I also wonder about auto insurance companies. They know what cars their customers own — wouldn’t it make sense for them to send out notices asking them to get the security patch, and warn that they might deny theft claims? Or are they just raising rates for those customers and dropping coverage? If they took action, it’s not mentioned in the article.

If you own a Kia or a Hyundai model from 2011-2022, I would check into this if you haven’t already.

But wait, there’s more

The comments on Manjoo’s column are a fascinating look into how people think and talk about crime. 1,315 comments were posted before it closed. Some argue the column is saying criminals shouldn’t be held responsible just because the cars are too easy to steal. (Manjoo replies nowhere does it say that.)

Others ask why we should hold the car companies responsible for this when gun makers have zero liability. There’s a suggestion that if Kia and Hyundai are liable here, stores should be held liable for making shoplifting too easy. (Part of that narrative that a giant crime wave is driving stores to close in the (Democratic) urban hellholes is where I guess that’s coming from.)

There’s a certain amount of “We’re not punishing criminals hard enough, and blaming the victims too much.” Some people want to blame the police for not doing their jobs, some the owners, and some are just unhappy and looking for a place to vent. Social media gets some bashing too.

All in all, it’s a look at why trying to decide how to approach crime is not a simple thing in this country, although some wish it were.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/2/2190908/-Kia-and-Hyundai-and-Crime-and-Punishment

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