Parts for stolen Hyundais and Kias are so scarce the cars are being totaled | Hacker News Reader

Parts for stolen Hyundais and Kias are so scarce the cars are being totaled

thedrive.com

170 pointsPaulHoule201 comments

Hyundai and Kia cars are popular here in Australia (I own a 2017 Hyundai) but I haven't heard anything about thefts here. Turns out it's because of Australian regulations that have required engine immobilisers since 2001 making it almost impossible unless you have the keys - https://www.drive.com.au/news/us-kia-and-hyundai-thefts-what...

There was a feeling that car thefts were a crisis in the 1970s so almost cars have had immobilizer and a locking steering column since the 1980s in the US. I guess it wasn’t required but i do know insurance companies would give you a small discount for having an immobilizer.

I hotwired an old 1970s “boat of car” in 1992 (with permission) but i had no idea how you’d steal a car newer than that. Car thefts fell out of fashion and the new fear became “carjackings” where somebody steals you car at gunpoint when you’re driving it.

By the 2010s people had forgotten that car theft was a problem and I started hearing stories about cars being stolen with insecure keyless entry systems, now sometimes they smash a headlight and hack into the CAN bus. It’s a fairly predictable problem in law enforcement and crime management that people have a finite list of priorities to attend to and if they decide to do something about car thefts or excessive false alarms or racism or whatever we get some improvements but once there is improvement people get worried about something else then the old problems come back.

Nowadays it really depends on how the immobilizer works to figure out how to/if you can override it easily.

I'm familiar with a couple designs - and on my vehicle I found it trivial to temporarily override (with the wiring diagram in the service manual).

My vehicles are on the older end of having immobilizers, but on them automakers certainly didn't integrate it tightly with other systems. It is controlled by one of the main ECUs - but the lockout method is subpar.

Better integration of the immobilizer goes along with the development of new engine management systems - so there may be more integration on vehicles with the newest engine designs (but not necessarily if the engine descended from a previous design and they kept the engine management system mostly intact....).

Some immobilizers disable starting, some disable fuel pump, some disable ignition, and some disable injectors. The how these are electrically disabled also matters a lot.

It's still trivial to override the first two methods, and sometimes the second two, but at least the last two have the potential to require more than a wire to disable if they are better integrated with the ECU.

The last two methods--disabling ignition and disabling fuel injection--can be defeated by bringing your own ECU and / or other chips so that your key unlocks everything.

That could even be quick, depending on the make and model of the car.

The next step is to make all components work only if they can verify the ECU is the right one via the cryptographic solution du jour.

But this also complicates replacing wear components like coil packs, which now have to be tied to a specific vehicle, and can be defeated with enough part swaps anyways.

Physical security is hard.

There are different segments of car thieves.

There are some sophisticated gangs that are stealing the cars and chopping them for parts or shipping them to South Africa.

Then there are people who steal cars for fun.

The later are easy to deter with technical measures, the former much harder.

Personally I think there ought to be a "tough love" conversation with certain German carmakers about how they sell parts with the possible endpoint of them being kicked out. German cars are overpriced and unreliable and they seem now to be planning gas cars for centuries after the rest of the world moves on. If European car brands were excluded from international trade I think that would make the world better and not worse.

If you haven’t heard of the Kia boys over here in the states, it’s definitely something. This vid is…a bit controversial but the Kia boys are definitely a thing in Milwaukee:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbTrLyqL_nw

I think that's the case everywhere - certainly all cars in the UK haha immobilisers as standard.

However, there are some brands of car where it's possible to gain access to the CAN bus, and inject "start the car" messages, so then it's just a case of a standard ignition lock theft (which is easily done in old school sawn off bit of scaffold pole style).

Some cars headlight wiring connects to the same CAN bus as the immobiliser, making the theft easy from outside the car. Don't have the link handy, but there was an article on here a few weeks ago about it.

Before the keyless entry fad most cars had a locking steering column that would require you to break the the locking mechanism, which you could do by twisting it really hard with a crowbar. (If you were lucky the owners had “The Club” which was advertised in The Rush Limbaugh Show, and you could use that to get leverage.)

Between dealing with that and the immobilizer, stealing a car was a big hassle and car thefts were rare.

With modern cars you can just drive them off without a key.

Absolute geniuses decided to make keys not required and instead just broadcast an unencrypted password 24/7

It's not surprising that both the cars have the same vulnerability as kia and hyundai are owned by the same parent company.

Its also not unsurprising it was the Korean car manufacturers with these security defects.

In Korea people have 0 converns about their car being stolen. Theft in general is seen as so low a risk that people leave their car windows open a crack in the summer so the car stays ventilated. When the cars are designed by people who live in a society like that, it's not surprising they have a blind spot when it comes to car security.

Edit: hyundai has a majority stake in kia, they dont outright own it, but it's basically as good as. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Motor_Company

I grew up in Georgia (the state) and besides Atlanta, it is still very much that way. When I stop by my grandparents house, if they're not home I'll just walk on in and pour myself some tea while I wait or watch TV. Their neighbor mows their yard if none of the family can make it over to do it.

Even only 40 mins from Atlanta, people still do that. I guess you call it a high-trust society? It's really only in the big American cities where that trust goes missing.

Moved from NYC to South Carolina and the culture shock is real.

Doors aren't locked. Neighbors help each other out with stuff like mowing, or bringing bins up/down driveways on trash day. No words are exchanged about it either.

I removed the rust and repainted my mailbox this weekend and then went around the neighborhood to do the same for others while I had spare time and spare paint left.

This is what I moved here for. No way will I stop working remote and go back.

Welcome to Appalachia. We have many issues but we get a couple of things right.

I'm in Midlands SC (and some time in Lowcountry before it). Technically we're just outside of Appalachia, but yeah the attitude applies.

Heck, half of our state seems to be from Southern Ohio anyway!

Funny how that works. A lot of people from Appalachia and the Deep South migrated to Ohio and the midwest for jobs in the early 1900s

By and large true, but there are some sketchy rural places, and some rural places that are safe but not friendly....such as the place I moved back when I assumed all rural people were neighborly.

No doubt. And honestly where I am at wouldn't be considered rural. There are farms 5 minutes down the road from me but we're comfortably suburban.

One thing people need to keep in mind these days is that some folks seek out the most rural places because they don't want to be bothered. Some of them have something to hide too.

Can confirm, I don't own a key to my own home. I bought it without a key and I've never thought to get one.

My neighbor gave me the code to his safe (full of gold coins), "just in case."

You should not reveal that you know the code and especially the content of neighbour’s safe. Your physical surroundings might be safe, but internet is not.

My physical surroundings are not safe, per se. My location doesn't determine my vulnerability. Anyone can attack anyone for any reason.

But I agree with your comment's sentiment. I considered it, but only after the edit period was up. I generally consider myself anonymous here, which actually isn't true.

Thanks for taking the time.

I'm sure your neighbor trusts that you'll let their heirs/widow access to the coins should the need arise. Life is that much better when you can trust people like that.

Maybe I misread the thread, but I’d find it a bit surprising (though not unlikely) that they would trust their neighbors more than their widow and heirs. Maybe they’re close friends that happen to be neighbors too, but then being neighbors would be a bit of a red herring.

I'm going to lay it out flat with you: Family relations are shit. There are tons of toes that should not be stepped on, there are "we're family" reasonings that might as well be under-the-table dealings you need to keep track of, if inheritances are on the line then who knows who has a knife ready to stab you in the back.

Friends and neighbours by contrast are platonic, they are relatively simpler relationships. In fact, because they are so simple, there is much more value in trust and honesty because anyone who is dishonorable will instantly lose that relationship. Family relations aren't like that because most relationships can't be easily deleted.

As the saying goes, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Your closest relationships are your family.

This isn't to insult the professions of people who show up to your house in emergencies, but elderly folks are known to hide cash away and more than once have I heard of situations where first responders tossed a person's house looking for valuables.

Giving a trusted neighbor access and information about the contents is to protect those things for your heirs -- or to get you out of a jam.

I generally operate in life assuming the best intentions out of everyone unless proven otherwise. I don't try looking for an ulterior motive

Many people in upstate NY live in houses without doors that lock. (If somebody is going to travel a long way to your house and there are no witnesses they can just smash down the door anyway.)

On the other hand, despite being the home of anti-gun crusaders such as Mike Bloomberg, I’d reckon that half of the houses in upstate NY have a loaded gun stashed somewhere around the bed. I would bear that in mind if attempting any sort of home invasion.

These are excellent for murdering folks who accidentally turn into the wrong driveway.

Locks?

Mentioning safety in Korea is irrelevant. Kia and Hyundai cars in Canada (and other countries) are sold with an immobilizer, and don't have this ignition switch security vulnerability prevalent in the U.S. model.

Additionally, TikTok must be scrutinized/penalized for distributing this "educational" material. Their algos have a strong influence on teens. This content doesn't appear to exist on Youtube (I just did a quick search). Meanwhile, in China, you are censored for merely sharing photos of Winnie the Pooh on Douyin.

Penalized for showing an exploit?

If someone posts an exploit on Github and it's taken down people get upset. This is the same and Kia and Hyundai would do nothing about it without the publicity they got from the viral TikTok.

Could be worse and insurance companies claim the owner left the car open so it's their fault the car was stolen.

Penalising letting people freely communicate seems like a cure worse than the disease.

Yes, we should censor and prosecute people like China does for revealing unpalatable truths.

That's sure to solve our problems with corporations that have been disincentivized to include basic safety mechanisms because of inadequate regulations and/or corporate lobbying.

I'm reminded of the joke headline (usually about mass shootings):

'No Way to Prevent This', Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.

Where I live, some people don't lock their car doors, and some people leave the keys in their car...

But I don't understand what closing the windows all the way vs leaving them open a crack does for security? Are car windows that much more secure when fully closed? When I'm in sketchy neighborhoods, I expect people to be walking around with slim jims or breaking windows anyway, so a crack doesn't seem like a big deal?

If the window is cracked open, you can usually get a tool in that will allow you to unlock the car from the inside, as you would if you were inside the car. You can then get in without any noise.

Source: I used to hang out with people who knew car thieves when I was much younger (very early 90s). I knew the area's worst car thief by name, and he would tell you how skilled he was at any opportunity. He always had a thin piece of metal with a hooked end on him (fitted down his jacket arm) for this purpose.

The window doesn't need to be cracked open to use a "slim jim", at least on older vehicles.

I once accidentally locked myself out of the 2000 Honda Civic I used to own. The engine was still running, and I didn't want it to run out of gas or be late to work. I popped the driver's side door window trim off so I could see how the mechanism worked, and then improvised a "slim jim" out of some wire from my fence. It was disappointingly easy.

I mean you can also just the break the window, which is what happened to my rental in Hawaii so someone could steal the empty backpack inside. $350 I could've saved had I just left the windows open.

A friend of ours drove her mother's car here and accidentally locked the keys inside. Made a call to the local police station and a deputy showed up and opened the car in less than a minute.

This isn't true for any modern car. Even my 2006 VAG shitbox has a double locking feature, where locking the doors from the outside disables the handles on the interior and the unlock switches.

What? Do they double as prisoner transport vehicles? I'd keep one of those safety hammers in my car if it had such a system.

It's a pretty standard feature here in Europe. In any case, if you've locked the doors from the outside, there should be no reason for the internal handles or unlock switches to be operational.

I guess Europeans never stop in at a store real quick while someone is in the car, and lock the doors while in the store?

Really, disabling the inside handles when there could be a person inside the car sounds like a deathtrap.

Don't leave a person in the car.

Ok, so I'm on a longer drive, and a passenger falls asleep, but I need to stop and go to the restroom.

Should I a) force them to wake up and either leave the car or be in charge of the door locks b) leave them asleep with the doors unlocked c) trap them in the car?

Of course, I understand Europe also likes to have keyed both sides deadbolts, so I guess you always need to check if everyone inside the house has a working key before locking the door when you leave too?

Just leave the key in the car?

What if there's someone in the car?

Don't leave a person in the car.

I mean, I tell myself not to lock my keys in my car, but it has happened on occasion. Do you think you'd be able to escape your car if locked in? I feel like I may be able to kick my way out or otherwise break a window, but I'm not completely sure of that.

You use the headrest for that.

Vehicle headrests are deliberately detachable so the metal prongs can be used to break the window.

I'm skeptical, but that may be the case in Europe. It does not seem to be in the US https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/car-headrests-emergency-es...

When I lived in a particularly sketchy part of Glasgow about 20 years ago, I lost the keys for my car. It was an old but quite nice (and fast) Citroën CX, so I was a bit worried that I'd dropped them somewhere and someone would use them to steal the car.

I'd been running around in my work van for a week or so, before - by chance - I parked up beside the Citroën, where I saw the keys hanging from the driver's door.

They'd been hanging in the door all week. No-one had touched it.

Yeah, I don’t get why leaving your car windows cracked is supposed to be indicative. I’ve done that even in parts of the Bay Area that are infamous for smash and grabs. They’ll either break your window and be gone 3 seconds later, or they won’t. The cracked window won’t change anything.

Some cracks are big enough for whole hands to get inside to grab the door handle or valuables.

> But I don't understand what closing the windows all the way vs leaving them open a crack does for security?

Because security is about having slightly higher security than the other person.

It is a game of "you don't have to outrun the bear / swim faster than the shark, you just have to be faster than the other person".

And open car window lets someone easily get in without breaking the glass and attracting attention and the cracked open window may give them the idea to try it in the first place.

The locks on your door are also nearly useless against someone with any lock picking skill at all, and your windows can probably be easily broken, but thieves are more likely to come in through an unlocked door or open window.

And these days with immobilizers, the cars that have them aren't often being stolen by hacking the CANbus, they're being stolen because people leave them idling in the driveway with the fob inside the car and the thief just hops in and drives off--possibly with the kid in the backseat.

If you lock your doors, roll your windows up and don't leave your keys in the car you will have left problems with theft and burglary. You won't eliminate it, but that doesn't mean those precautions don't work at all. Security isn't a binary either-or where you either have perfect security or none at all.

> Because security is about having slightly higher security than the other person.

I get that, but I just don't see the security disadvantage of having a 1 cm gap between the top of the glass and the bottom of the window frame; that's what I'm asking about.

> And open car window lets someone easily get in without breaking the glass and attracting attention and the cracked open window may give them the idea to try it in the first place.

If the car's locked with the window a bit down, they can't use the handle to get in.

They'd still need to break the glass.

> Theft in general is seen as so low a risk that people leave their car windows open a crack in the summer so the car stays ventilated.

This isn't just a Korean thing. I'm in the states, and I've done this with every car I've had. Including the Jeep Wrangler I have now, when I don't have the top down.

Cracking open the window isn't a Korean thing, no. But feeling safe to do it literally anywhere in the country (including deprevated areas) is something you can do in Korea and I'd warn against in the states.

My point is that when the people designing the cars consciously or unconsciously don't think of theft as a concern, their cars might be easier to steal.

Another example is when Samsung aired an ad for their phones in the UK last year, featuring a woman jogging on 2am in the city. Apparently, that ruffled some feathers, with people questioning how Samsung could be so tone-deaf about women's safety.

Except that a woman jogging in Seoul's street on 2am would be a totally believable sight: I wouldn't personally recommend it, but it wouldn't look too out of place.

My business partner is an attractive young woman living in Seoul. I am based in California. She and I have regular phone meetings at 2 am her time. She uses our meeting time to jog around the city while talking. She's been doing this routine for 2 years and never had a problem.

When I visited Seoul, we went all over the city and I realized after 4 days that I had not seen a single policemen nor heard a single police siren. Seoul is 25 million people. I live in a "safe" California town of 60,000 people and see policemen all the time, and hear sirens regularly. I would caution any friend from jogging at 2am here.

In coffee shops in Seoul, people leave their wallets and laptops unattended while they go to the bathroom. By contrast, in my hometown in California, thieves have walked in, punched customers, grabbed laptops out of the customer's hands and run.

A very different world -- not just Seoul, but other cities in Asia.

> Apparently, that ruffled some feathers, with people questioning how Samsung could be so tone-deaf about women's safety.

In my time, at 2am UK streets were full of drunk men and women. Is it safer to be drunk than practicing sport? Did it change so much in 10 years or is it a safety fantasm?

It reminds me of how Audi puts different horns on cars shipped to India.

Hopefully they’re quieter…

Why would horns need to be different for India?

Indian drivers honk incessantly. It’s widely believed that driving there without honking frequently is unsafe, because concepts like lanes and signaling are… loosely followed, to put it mildly. Honking in North America or Europe either means an emergency or someone is pissed off. Honking in India means hello I am here.

Basically it’s reverse sonar

I wish honking in NA or EU was an emergency thing haha

Now that I live in Japan I really feel the difference every time I go back

Vietnam is this way too. Guessing a bunch of countries are like this.

Philippines as well.

China

As swalling said, honking in India is constant. A horn in a US bound car may be activated 100 times a year, if the driver is a real jerk. A horn in India will be activated 100 times a day easy. You need a much more robust horn (and horn switch) or it'll wear out quickly; but there's no need for such a robust horn in the US.

The last time I owned a car was 1997. By that time, I had 9 years' experience driving and I'd racked up a significant mileage as well. My first car was a Corolla where I could barely get to the horn, because it was a 2-inch button on the wheel. I can't remember exactly the configuration of the Integra's horn, but when I had that final, fateful accident, I made a really valiant attempt to honk at my assailant just before I cracked up, and completely failed to get any sound out of it. That was how infrequently I honked, and how inexperienced I was at activating that part of the car's controls!

It would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between the number of honks per driver and the number of accidents they are in involved in. But I doubt the onboard computer collects "num_honks: integer"

Found an article: https://jalopnik.com/audi-is-designing-extra-loud-horns-for-...

The last car I had was broken into in Tukwila. Window smashed. It was really annoying to get it fixed, so I just left my doors unlocked for the rest of the time I owned the car. There was one instance where someone went in my car and dug around. Better than getting the window broken again.

Aren’t you out of luck with insurance if the car is recovered but wasn’t broken into? Same as a burglary and there is no sign of forced entry, won’t the insurance deny the claim because you didn’t act prudently and locked your door?

Not op, but my car has an active exploit for the key fob that won't ever get fixed. (Thanks Honda) many cars have similar.

"I make a point of locking my car. This explicit exists. Prove I was negligent."

Tangentially, if you install subwoofers, use a quick disconnect (and a fuse). At least if the subs get stolen, your car won't burn down.

It was an older car that I drove until it wasn't worth fixing anymore. I just had liability insurance.

I don’t understand why you’re mentioning your perception and opinion that people in Korea have 0 concerns about theft. And thus it somehow absolves Hyundai.

I suspect this was a money saving decision on Hyundai and Kia.

Immobilizers were standard on 96% of other manufacturers' models, the institute said. But they were standard on only 26% of Hyundai and Kia models. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hyundai-kia-engine-immobilizer-...

It amazing to me people line up paying over MSRP for some of these cars. Some mechanic friends of mine have said that Hyundais are some of the worse cars. Full engine replacement with less that 30k miles.

i drove a Hyundai Elantra in the mid-2000s. It was a nice car in many respects but around 80,000 miles it started falling apart and needed a $300 repair every month and i figured at that rate i could spend that money on a car payment and be driving a new car so I got a Honda.

These things definitely go in cycles, in the 90s, in the UK "Twoccing" was a big deal, particularly in and around Newcastle. (The stem 'twoc' is derived from Taken Without Owners Consent)

It was almost entirely kids aged 8-18 stealing and racing cars until they ran out of gas, or crashed. Police had very little recourse given that the perpetrators were minors

https://wordhistories.net/2021/04/21/twoc/

It's a separate thing to make it easier to police, because "theft" is a crime, but it's easy to claim that you were just "borrowing" the car. It might even be true! Teens borrow their parents' cars, race around in them, the parents don't want the kids to get into trouble (which is generally reasonable) and claim that they were allowed to take the car.

So the rule now is that you're not allowed to let someone drive your car who's not entitled to drive your car. If you consented to them taking it, you're in trouble (and they're still in trouble for driving without a license and insurance). If you didn't consent, they're in trouble for TWOC and for driving without a license and insurance.

Wow. Great up in Hartlepool and heard the term twok so much and never had an idea it was an acronym.

Incredible, thanks!

For ignition cylinders, they never accounted to have this many in stock.

IMHO this is one example of what troubles proprietary parts can cause. For a part which performs essentially the same function across makes and models, they're often needlessly different with minor but incompatible changes even if they're all made by one OEM.

Cars used to have same headlights by law: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2J91UG6Fn8

I really wanna make a youtube video on how to pronounce Hyundai, drives me nuts. One of the guys in the video on this link says hondye, like honda... At least if people skipped the y and just say hun day it wold be closer than hon dye.

Here is the CEO saying Hyundai for anyone who would like to pronounce it correctly: https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxvI2EKxyut8K4wUGNL8CiefOk_RPY4CV...

For decades in the UK they've marketed themselves as "high-un-die". Now for some reason they want us to pronounce it slightly differently. I can't help but feel this is merely a cost saving measure so they can use the same ads here as they do elsewhere. Why does it matter how a different country pronounces a foreign word?

I doubted you, for that I offer my apologies.

https://youtu.be/n5j1UdLM2Pg

Now it looks like they want you to pronounce it the Korean way?

https://youtu.be/8peKcSEDFB4 This ad is hilarious, why the f did they advertise it in such a weird way before?!

I live in Korea and hear it pronounce the Korea way all the time. Frankly, had I known this was their marketing abroad, I'd never have complained. Thanks for sharing! :)

I can only assume that originally they didn't think we could pronounce it the Korean way. Similar to how Nestlé was originally pronounced nestle (neh-sel) in the UK.

So in Korea it's pronounced hyun-dae. But they spelt it 'hyundai' (said hy-un-dai) for western markets to sound more Japanese so their brand was associated with the quality of Toyota and Honda.

Hmm, I don't think anyone with a passing knowledge of Japanese would look at that "hyun" and think it sounds Japanese ...

It's spelled that way because it was born before Korea's industrialization, when regular transliteration of Korean was pretty far down the list of concerns. Everybody just grabbed whatever sequence of alphabets that vaguely resembled the original sound, a tradition still continuing with names of people and companies.

The radio ads here in the UK say “hy-un-dai” too so that proves that that’s the pronunciation Hyundai want perpetuates

I wonder if that's how we got the pronunciation for Chevrolet as well (: . In Korean it's 현대. Theㅕmakes a yuh sound with a short y, and projecting one writing system onto another can get tricky.

Didn’t they have an ad some time ago where they say “Hyundai like Sunday”?

It isn't just "dumb American's" fault. They promote different pronunciations by region. Compare Australian commercials to Usonian. Westerners don't pronounce Honda, Toyota, Mitsubishi, or Nissan correctly either and nobody bats an eye.

A regional pronunciation that's ingrained in the culture is no more or less correct, particularly for a foreign word. And the Japanese pronunciation of western brand names is similarly incorrect (mostly due to the limitations of their language but the point stands).

The Western world encompasses many more languages than English. My mother language is Spanish and we pronounce most Japanese names correctly. It helps that both languages have the same 5 vowels and a similar set of consonants.

Japanese is not hard for English speakers. I bought two lots of minidiscs from Japan and was listening to them before recording over them and my wife was somewhat surprised at how singing Japanese does not sound all that foreign to her. Chinese, in the other hand, really does sound different, and personally I find the sounds of French much more difficult.

The problem are the vowels. Germanic languages are notorious for having a large number of vowels that may not even be consistent across dialects. Add the funky English spelling, and it is no wonder that English speakers will mangle Japanese names beyond recognition.

But yes, Japanese has pretty simple sounds and prosody and it is easy to pick up. I studied French for 5 years, and I could never get the pronunciation right. I know how words should sound, but my mouth just refuses to do it. I also studied one year of Chinese, and while I enjoyed it a lot, good god is the phonology difficult with all the weird consonant and the tones.

Going in the other direction, the official spelling of Pfizer in Korea is 화이자, which sounds a bit like why-jah. A game of telephone going through Japanese, which somehow stuck.

At least they pronounce Kia correctly, although I wouldn't have named my car brand with the same letters as the abbreviation to "killed in action". Btw, their Kia brand means "rising from (ki) Asia (a)".

This is a lost cause. Similar to Seoul (it blew my mind when I heard it pronounced by locals: soh-wool, because the letters are s-eo-ou-l).

A recent Party Down episode made reference to the pronunciation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr-nZJNg0-A :)

It doesn't matter how one pronounces. Thanks to the great vowel shift, even English words are pronounced differently than they were in 14th century.

> I really wanna make a youtube video on how to pronounce Hyundai, drives me nuts

Why? Once enough people pronounce a word in some unique that becomes the new pronunciation.

Cities sue Hyundai and Kia after a wave of car thefts: https://www.wsj.com/articles/cities-sue-hyundai-kia-after-wa...

"Not our problem we have an issue with crime."

When an insurance company totals your car you can generally buy your car back from them and get a salvage title. This would seem like a decent opportunity given that an ignition switch is just a basic 3 or 4 position switch (especially on these cars!). So either replace it with some half-fitting generic switch(es) or just hotwire your car every time.

> So either replace it with some half-fitting generic switch(es) or just hotwire your car every time.

Be careful to not develop bad habits if you do that.

When I was a in high school something went wrong with the key mechanism for our ignition switch. My dad was able to remove part of it leaving it so that you could shove a screwdriver in and turn the switch that way.

That worked great and so there was no hurry to actually get it fixed to work with the keys.

After a while we got out of the habit of taking the keys when we were going to drive somewhere.

Then one day I'm driving home, which was in a rural area in central California, and got a flat tire. The spare was in the trunk, which was locked. This was in the '70s so no cell phone to call for help. There weren't any houses in sight, just farm fields. The road I was on didn't get much traffic, so it could be hours before someone would drive by. And it was in the middle of the day in summer.

I had to walk home, get the keys, and walk back to the car to change the tire. It was very annoying.

Some places require a re-inspection, but those often don't care about much beyond brakes and lights and things (including the driver's window being able to roll down and the horn, often).

Do note that the salvage title does affect some things like resale/trade-in, but if you want to drive it, that's what you want.

The re-inspection in Minnesota specifically says that it's not a safety inspection. They just want to be sure you have receipts for everything you fixed on the car to prove that it wasn't rebuilt with stolen parts. Never made sense to me, but there you go.

Two times i bought back the salvage title for a car that was damaged but otherwise in good condition including a Mazda that had been hit by a deer and a Honda that I rolled. Funny enough, both of those cars got totaled again pretty quickly.

Don't you have to re-certify your car after it's been written off?

haha, pick your state:

Florida - Taylor Ray https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5wt8FpNy10 "LS Miata ABANDONED NEIGHBORHOOD TESTING!" LS powered full racecar straight piped miata, has title, inspection was going in and getting a stamp.

Oklahoma - no inspections at all, straight piped work trucks with rusted out frames are the norm.

Kansas - Hoovies Garage https://youtu.be/ZlwjXhdNd3Y?t=433 "Why buying an old Shelby GT350 race car WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA" Full leaking fuel racecar with no speedo/lights/windows, inspector doesnt bother to even see it in person.

Utah - M539 Restorations https://youtu.be/_a9rCI2zfPM?t=524 "Buying & Fixing Broken BMW E46 M3 5200 Miles Away From Home - Project Salt Lake: Part 1" tire shop "inspection station", only interested in plugging in OBD to do emissions, doesnt bother to come out look at the car. Car is broken (wobbly wheel, etc) plus cant even pass ODB emissions, gets temp tag anyway.

In most states recertification is paying some administrative fee at the dmv without anyone even looking at the car.

Never understood the states with no safety inspection at the least. NC does both, emissions depend on county, and I don't see as many cars on the road that make me nervous to be around.

MN has neither. They did away with emissions tests...20 years ago? I don't think they've ever had a safety inspection, at least I don't remember it (I'm in my mid-50s), but maybe it was part of the emissions test at the time. Now I just fill out a quick form online every year for my new tabs and a week later get them in the mail and put them on.

Jeebus, I guess it contributes to traffic mortality many times more than (most of) Europe or Australia.

It's not terribly complicated nor costly. And if the only thing wrong with the car is the ignition switch it'll trivially pass the "brake and light adjustment" (CA) inspection.

Taking the cash and buying the car back at salvage value is a no-brainer in this situation.

Fascinating to click through and see the stats for stolen cars. Florida is #10.

But then you read this and it's a completely different story. Why the huge discrepancies in reporting?

https://www.nicb.org/news/news-releases/nicb-report-finds-ve...

What in the hell is going on in the mountain west? ABQ, Pueblo, Denver, Billings? What makes this region so prime for car thefts?

I had a truck and a motorcycle stolen in a small town in Wyoming. Another 11 vehicles were stolen in 1 week in the same town. Some were caught on tape.

Police told me the thieves were likely a group from Mexico with a way to get either whole vehicles, or parts, across the border. And that they were moving through the region. Spend a few days in a town, pick all the low hanging fruit, get it back across the border, and never have to go back to that town again.

I can't say what's true, but that's what the police said. To me, it seems like it'd be very difficult to get whole vehicles across the border, but if you could, the rest of that strategy would play out great. Spend a week or two casing some sleepy town for targets, steal them all in a few days, and get the hell away and never come back.

Let's take for granted that the passing it to Mexico bit is significant in the numbers of stolen cars near the Mexico border.

That makes what's happening in Washington DC or Oregon positively disturbing, as they'd have an issue at a bigger scale than states where it's basically international organized crime that orchestrates the thefts...

I suspect the commonality (barring DC) is that these areas have cheap real estate where you can drive the car quickly to the garage and break it down before anyone even knows it's missing.

I really don't understand why DC, though. Is there a coordination problem with surrounding states if a car is reported stolen that makes stealing cars easy (DC is not a state, per se, as it is more of a federal protectorate-thingy)?

Might be no chase policy -> use it to do some crime -> ditch

I'm not saying that's not the case, but if it were, why isn't Tucson, Las Cruces, and El Paso higher on the list? They are much closer.

Maybe it's a don't s--- where you eat thing?

My best guess (and again I want to reiterate that this is all hearsay told to me by the police) is that those communities are more aware of these types of activities, and therefore the fruit is not quite as low-hanging as a sleepy Wyoming town.

Based on news out of Albuquerque, organized crime groups that were previously operating in So Cal (San Bernardo and Riverside previously had the highest rates) figured out they could get their mission accomplished more easily in New Mexico and Colorado.

the country is sparse enough that you can actually get some use out of the car, instead of getting picked up immediately by cameras or patrol.

being an outlaw is still a real, accessible way of life in remote parts of the country. there is an entire culture of people out there doing it, and they're mostly offline and invisible to the state.

Higher levels of background radiation in Denver turns people into supervillains. (And the rampant NIMBYism makes them poorer.)

Different numbers. One is cars stolen/population. The other is cars stolen/registered cars.

Vandals just go the path of least resistance and look for the latest 'trending' video to learn from others. I see a few issues: 1. A social media that would not takedown a video that shows illegal behavior. 2. A car company that kept a problem without recalls or revision 3. Youth that are largely un-parented and unsupervised 4. Insane amount of protection for underage criminal behavior 5. A youth culture that celebrates wild behavior 6. Lack of law enforcement (as officers are preoccupied with more major incidents)

In Russia it is customary to install 3rd party immobilizers. I gueas you could install that one but somebody will still break your window and vandalize your ignition lock.

Not only Russia, but the big part of ex-USSR as well. Typical device will feature an encrypted radio channel, protected from repeat and retranslation attacks. It will be hidden inside the car and use several immobilisation techniques. When an unauthorised engine start is detected it will spam the bus with signals to desync the connected devices and shut down the injection. Thieves can defeat that by bringing multiple pre-wired ECU and attaching them to the engine, transmission etc of the car getting stolen. As a counter measure the data connectors to these units are often rewired so that the unadulterated wiring won’t work. Then there will be a relay to break power to the fuel pump. This of course is defeated by hot-wiring the motor. Also mechanical locks are installed, the motor hood is reinforced etc. In isolation each of these measureas are rather easy to work around technically, but for the thief it’s usually easier to simply find an unprotected vehicle

Why did the other comment get killed?

The TikTok challenges have been crazy. But only in American do these crimes happen to such an extent and then go unpunished.

The social media component of this crime wave is huge, as victims with insight on the perpetrators' social scene will tell you:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/us/car-theft-teens-pandem... (https://archive.ph/XCzB4)

On the bright side, Wisconsin (home to Milwaukee and the Kia Boys) is poised to increase penalties on vehicle theft:

https://www.weau.com/2023/04/18/wisconsin-assembly-aims-hars...

And Kia Boys who are arrested will potentially be held in jail for longer, which in practice will prevent them from committing more crimes as they await trial:

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2023/... (https://archive.ph/tT8Xr)

So long as these kids remain unparented and out of control they will continue to destroy their own lives, the lives of others, and communities which tolerate their behavior.

how about Kia and Hyundai just fix their cars. I will rather solve a technology problem than create a human one.

They only go unpunished in some parts of the country.

I thought modern cars have an electronic challenge mechanism with the key that you can’t bypass as easily. Is that not the case ?

You are describing the immobilizer feature which is missing in Hyundai/Kia sold in the US

They used to, but people got complacent. I remember hearing about people hacking keyless entry systems on luxury cars (belonging to some European footballer for instance) in the mid-2000s, by the 2010s I remember hearing about people stealing Fords and cars like that.

In the 1970s Americans were terrified of car thefts, it got very hard to do, then carmakers started slipping.

These videos are enough to make your blood boil. Amazing the thieves didn't kill anyone.

Ah my bad, they are killing people. Not with their reckless driving but intentionally with guns.

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