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Comment by endisneigh | Hacker News Reader

flawed or not, the onus is not on Kia. ultimately baltimore is suing them because of the spike in car thefts, not because of the flawed design. presumably if baltimore had no thieves, there would be no thefts irrespective of the design.

so in effect baltimore is suing kia becuase their cars are getting stolen which is ridiculous.

i don't know how anyone can defend this.

this would be like baltimore suing banks for allowing customers to put in the pin "1234" after seeing a spike in money theft through ATMs.

if Baltimore wants the cars to be harder to steal, then they should work with the governor to pass a law that requires cars sold in Maryland to have whatever security functionality they deem necessary.

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You cannot make something that you know will cause a nuisance. You cannot, for instance, sell fireworks only between 1-3am in the middle of a neighborhood and act surprised when the neighbors are mad at you because kids are setting them off all night.

It was absolutely predictable that these cars would be stolen and that the police would have to deal with the fallout. Just because there's no explicit law does not mean that Kia doesn't know better. Kia needs to pay for that.

Yea, I'm really surprised at all this defense of these corporations. They produced and sold a defective product, which is causing monetary damages to cities as they need to deal with the predictable exploit of that defect. I'm sure the city is prepared to show that these damages are a result of the companies' negligence.

If I owned one of these defective cars, I'd also be keen on participating in a lawsuit against the company.

If these cars had a defect that caused them to suddenly catch fire and burn down neighborhoods, you'd bet there would be lawsuits from everyone, including cities who pay for fire departments.

> Yea, I'm really surprised at all this defense of these corporations.

Well, the government does already set a bunch of standards for cars.

And before the car leaves the factory, it's fine for the government to be issuing mandatory standards for lights, spare parts, seatbelts, crash safety, pedestrian protection, fuel economy and so on.

But the government having a second, secret set of requirements? That can change without anyone being notified? To me that seems rather irregular.

There's no federal standard that says cars must not explode in a fireball during refueling. If one make of car started exploding, you'd see the federal government get involved very quickly.

To me, that seems like a responsible way to react to an irregular situation.

The cars are not exploding. The government has no reason to car about your private property. Should bike manufacturers be sued as well for the rampant bike theft that happens in virtually every city in America? Gimme a break

Affected owners should put together a class action and force a recall on the affected cars. As for those who actually got their cars stolen - they should take that up with the police and their insurance.

is there evidence that car thefts are higher due to Kia, or due to lax enforcement? I suspect it’s a bit of both and Baltimore is trying to pin it all on anyone else but them.

Not making excuses for Kia. They should absolutely get penalties for taking shortcuts. But I feel that higher insurance premiums and a bad reputation would take care of it. And people won’t buy their cars.

> is there evidence that car thefts are higher due to Kia, or due to lax enforcement?

Yes. In numerous cities the car theft rate has gone way up in the last couple of years, in some doubling or more, with something like 95% of the increase being thefts of these particular Kia and Hyundai models.

And there are also a lot of fat people due to ease of access to forks and spoons.

Here’s a better analogy - imagine the atm manufacturer wanted to save money so they built a machine with a lock that could be pried off with a screwdriver instead of integrating security features inside the machine. This ATM would be about as trivially easy to break into as stealing a Kia/Hyundai is. Would the bank be right to pursue legal damages against the atm manufacturer for negligence?

> Would the bank be right to pursue legal damages against the atm manufacturer for negligence?

no. rather what would happen is that the bank would rightfully ask them to fix it or they would go with another manufacturer that meets their needs.

likewise, the government should increase the standard if they're not happy with it. not give the rubber stamp and still complain.

The bank is the customer in that case, and you could argue that they could sue, based on "assumptions about contract" or whatever.

Baltimore didn't buy these cars.

I'm curious if a class action lawsuit for Kia and Hyundai customers would make more sense.

I also wonder if auto insurance companies might refuse to insure Kia and Hyundai vehicles until this is fixed.

I believe the second has already begun, now that they offer a software patch to fix it (in theory).

It endangers the public safety of Baltimore.

Why does anyone lock their door if the city is supposed to be responsible for any form of theft?

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