1959 Chevy Corvette seized by police returned to owner after 5 years, $28k | Hacker News Reader

1959 Chevy Corvette seized by police returned to owner after 5 years, $28k

thedrive.com

37 pointstomohawk17 comments

The important point of this story is not whether VIN plates should or shouldn't be affixed with rivets. It is whether the state should be able to _administratively_ confiscate personal and valuable property without a court order. Civil forfeiture laws have no place in democratic societies.

I feel like these absurd levels of bureaucracy, unjustly wielding power against the individual, are exactly how killdozers are born

Never heard of it until now. Quite a damatic story..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer#The_bulldozer

Edit:

Also see related tank rampage: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33444626

Killdozer and the San Diego tank guy were almost pre internet memes.

Metadat here’s an entertaining summary of kill dozer with footage

https://youtu.be/Xmr6jIpXSmg

Damn, that's freaking crazy. GTA in real life. Thanks for showing me, sn0w!

Others: Skip around a bit and you'll see him plow right through buildings, trees, and everything else in the heavily armored bulldozer.

This is next-level fucked up.

Seeing the owner crying in the YouTube video, heartbroken and angry made me feel sad.

All over two rivets.

Apparently dreams go to Kansas die by a crusher.

This pisses me off too. But after thinking about it for a moment I can see the state’s point. The only way to know this car isn’t stolen is the vin. The vin shows signs of tampering. Therefore I don’t know this car is the correct one matching the vin.

This case is absurd and terrible, but the rule is there to protect us all from car theft so I get being strict.

When restoring a car if you remove the vin you best put it back on with the correct fasteners. The root of the problem was the restorer’s shoddy work. Then the error was compounded by the state’s inflexibility. They should also be held liable for harm that came to the car while in their custody.

Idiot compliance. Imbeciles following marching orders.

Attempting to appear to be useful.

The vin is stamped all over cars oftentimes in places where it is very hard to get to. Classic car folks will check them all to make sure they aren’t paying top dollar for a car that has been pieced together from parts of different cars.

I saw one video on the YouTubes where they were talking about how highly illegal it is to mess with the vin plate so its not like a random Kansas MVD employee just pulled some law out of their ass because they were having a bad day. Specifically, iirc, they were saying in the video it was illegal to even sell replacement rivets for vin plates.

One would think they would try to figure out who the rightful owner of a car with an altered vin before taking it to the crusher though.

That's just the Dashboard VIN.

The VIN is stamped all over the car. If the dashboard VIN matches the VINs all over the rest of the car, there is no reason to go zero tolerance over the wrong screws used in one location.

I'm so incredibly confused. Rivets vs screws? Somebody help me understand.

Laws around cars are exceptionally strict to prevent manufacturers and car thieves from pulling fast ones, and if they are excessively applied you get insane results.

Rivets indicated the VIN might be faked I guess.

so it goes to the crusher?

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