Kia, Hyundai Blame Mass Car Thefts on ‘Lax Policing’ in Court Defense
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
(1) https://fathers.com/the-consequences-of-fatherlessness/\ (2) https://www.fatherhood.org/father-absence-statistic (3) https://ifstudies.org/blog/life-without-father-less-college-... (4) https://medium.com/@apdonovan1990/10-insane-stats-that-show-...
Ie there's a lot of causes in adult behavior that could be tied or contributed to by their childhood, ie another adults behavior and decisions. I struggle to understand the action items with that information, though.
I desire more mental health funding and etc, so i'm not criticizing any attempt to do something. Rather i struggle to imagine what the state's solution would be to a lack of fathers.
Manipulate the incentive structure so that it does not financially incentivize single parents.
"Show me the incentive, I'll show you the outcome."
If you work backwards further, you'll find you're unable to fix dysfunctional relationships through economic policy. ~40% of annual pregnancies in the US are unintended, so perhaps more accessible family planning is what is needed, so that people who don't want to be parents don't become parents.
https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-u...
Information to consume to better understand this mental model: https://ifstudies.org/blog/category/single-parents
"The world is never unhappy because of children who have not yet been born; it is grief stricken by children who have been placed on the planet without anyone to love them adequately. We can cope with fewer children, we can't cope with yet more parents insufficiently dedicated to the tasks of love." -- Unknown
Tangentially, there are ~400k children in foster care in the US at any moment in time, roughly 1/4 of which are adoptable. No one adopts them, and then they age out into adulthood. What happens next as adults, the statistics are grim (roughly 25 percent become homeless).
So, these various datasets leads me to the conclusion that we have a long way to go to help people who don't want kids to not have them (while still robustly supporting parents who very much want to parent). This, I believe, will lead to better outcomes overall. I also argue society wants healthy productive citizens who will be taxpayers and generate productivity, but doesn't give a damn about helping parents or struggling children (you would think advocates of universal school lunches were asking for someone's head on a platter, for example), so society deserves what it gets in that regard until it's ready to invest. Talk is cheap.
I hope not. Everybody wants a "more simplified tax code" except they all want their own credit/deduction/exemption/whatever. This is how we end up with nonsense like the masters exemption.
> This IRS exemption allows homeowners to exclude up to two weeks of rental income from their taxable income.
A dearth of legal rights has acted synergistically with cultural changes to alienate children from their fathers, and so the children seek out authority figures and acceptance in gangs, or sports, or social media.
This is what it looks like when you're smashing the patriarchy and cancelling the patriarchs.
Police do not prevent crime, they apprehend people that they then accuse of doing the crime.
When you have somebody actively looking to steal $THING, they will find it and steal it.
You do not see these massive Kia/Hyundai thefts in countries that mandated immobilizers in all new vehicles.
So it is a failure of policy, not policing.
Adding some sources. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/role-pol...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/07/over-past...
https://prismreports.org/2022/02/23/police-dont-stop-crime-b...
Major crime stats were already dropping beforehand, and that trend continued with no correlation to the policy... not even a blip when stop-and-frisk was abruptly stopped for legal reasons.
Just because a politician says something when bragging about their job-record doesn't make it true.
___
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/09/22/donal...
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/09/stop-and-fris...
Crime was "already dropping" because of Bill Bratton.
It's actually curious that anyone would believe it, "never worked". What, you think Terry Stops made crime go up?
Citation needed. What statistic, in what time frame, relative to what baseline/context?
Perhaps less people will be actively looking to steal $THING if they know that that they might be apprehended and accused of doing the crime.
That sounds like lax policing to me. (Which itself derives from policy.)
It seems totally reasonable to me to expect that the higher the chance of negative consequences the less people commit the crime. Basically, police should lower the expected value.
Policy change that requires the manufacturer to install a part (that is a $~200 option in the USA) would have practically eliminated the car as being a "target" object.
Getting caught is always secondary in consideration to reward. If somebody is desperate enough, then it doesn't matter how risky it is.
Car theft isn't new. There being a punishment for stealing cars isn't new. What makes the Kia/Hyundia situation so significant is how EASY it is to do. Make it more hard to steal, and make that a mandatory policy.
The thieves will find other ways to steal cars, but it might stop the easy theft. More cops won't do that.
What I don't understand about your point is that policy already makes stealing cars, murder, etc. illegal. What do you see as the difference between a policy that forces a car manufacturer to implement some technology that hinders theft vs. a policy that makes theft illegal?
I agree with you that the technology is probably beneficial on the whole and more effective than having police running around attempting to stop every car theft, but you're making this into a debate about policy vs. police, and I'm failing to make sense of how you distinguish one policy (regulating car manufacturing) from another (stealing cars is illegal).
Another [very flawed] analogy; Let's say that all guns were banned. All guns disappear. Now 'easy' crimes involving guns disappear. If nobody has a gun, then somebody couldn't get shot.
If we move the burden further upstream and closer to the source then everybody downstream benefits. Make the manufacturer build "good locks" so that bic pens don't work.
The US has many issues that are independent of the penalties.
I actually agree that consequences can be an effective deterrent. Usually the naysayers share examples of recidivism to contradict this, not first-time offense. Seems kind of obvious and non-controversial that repeat offenders would not be deterred by possibility of jail once they're in that world and have nothing to lose. One need only look at all of east Asia to get a sense that harsh punishment works, it's just that you then have to deal with the other pitfalls... such as harsh punishment being applied in areas you don't want.
Even if you do increase prison time, it would have to represent a worse enough fate than what would-be criminals are living that they would wager differently. If crime scales with poverty, it's because poverty sucks. Jail sucks, but it tends to be a revolving door.
But "Greater Police Presence" can deter crime depending on what police do. The presence of police cars on highways does slow down drivers. If you want a ton of traffic, I mean cars following the speed limit, then a "Greater Police Presence" archives that (until drivers recognize that cops won't pull them over until they're going +20).
I really doubt organized crime will steal powertools from home depot while a cop is in the same asile. Of course they may just go to the lowes down the street. GPP has both a scalability issue but also an enforcement issue; you can commit many crimes in the presence of a cop and they will do nothing.
They can still be a contributing factor without being the differentiating factor.
This is not done as much any more. I recall getting pulled over over the years and being asked by police "where are you going?". Obviously one does not have to answer, but it gave them the opportunity to smell for weed or alcohol use and also see what was in the car (possibly prohibited or hot goods in the car)
"Police do not prevent crime"
So which is it? In one sentence you say police prevent crimes of opportunity, then in the very next sentence you say police do not prevent crime.
“Greater Police Presence [..] only ever prevents crimes [..]” - Kia/Hyundai take, claiming that increased police presence leads to higher rates of crime prevention.
“Police do not prevent crime” - police, in its current state, is not that effective at preventing crime (as opposed to a situation where police presence was increased).
I don’t have a strong opinion on this at all, and for all i know Kia/Hyundai take might be incorrect. But there is no inconsistency in what they are claiming.
TLDR: first statement - their cause-and-effect claim, second statement - “the current police crime prevention rates are bad [which is why police presence should be increased according to our earlier claim about increased police presence increasing crime prevention rates]”.
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/anti-theft-immobilizers-in-cars-a...
https://globalnews.ca/news/9392427/vehicle-theft-canada-secu...
> For example in Toronto last year, there were 9,439 reports of auto theft — a jump of nearly 45 per cent from the previous year. Toronto Police Service records show that auto theft has increased annually every year since 2018.
Once Kia and like manufacturers put immobilizers in their American cars, thieves will target the most expensive car rather than these brands, but that will not stop car theft.
Do you think there would be more or less crime if there were no police officers
Also what is this 1984 double speak "apprehend people that they then accuse", are you talking about suspects lmao?
Right.. but the goal of the police work is to find the criminal and put them in jail for a while. This is meant to be a social deterrent, wherein, the punishment for the crime makes committing the crime not worthwhile.
> When you have somebody actively looking to steal $THING, they will find it and steal it.
Exactly.. which is why we use jail. You also seem to be suggesting that the lack of anti theft wouldn't matter to the overall rate, it just makes these particular cars more likely to be targeted. There are obvious and measurable problems with this idea.
> So it is a failure of policy, not policing.
Well.. if you don't have enough police to actually find and put criminals in jail, you can call that a policy problem, but the policy failure is simply not having enough police.
A very small percentage of people commit a shockingly high proportion of crime. In NYC, a third of shoplifting cases were committed by 327 people who were arrested over 6,000 times. That's just the times they were caught and arrested.
I can't find nationally representative data, but in Colorado, a news station looked at 10 randomly selected criminal cases for vehicle theft in 2021-2022. Every single one of the suspects had been accused of stealing cars more than once. Collectively they faced auto theft charges in 43 cases.
I don't see that implication in the post you are replying to. The widespread dissemination of information showing how comparatively easy it is to steal these makes of cars may be expected to divert some thieves from targeting other makes to these particular ones, but it may also be expected to bring in others who would not have been disposed to steal a car until they learned of the relative ease with which these makes may be stolen.
The logical problem with this is, are there people, who, no matter how easy it is to steal a car, just would never steal one?
If those people exist, then you're misattributing the source of this crime to the vehicle, when all along, it was with the individual. While there are obvious "thresholds to criminality" involved here, if you can measure a difference in space (e.g. theft rate of Korea vs USA) you again can be pretty confident it's an individual issue and not a product issue.
The other side is, perhaps our crime reduction measures have worked, and prevent many people who /would/ otherwise steal or commit crimes prevented from doing so, and a single breach in this system reveals what was true all along. You haven't removed criminals, you've just reduced their incentives to a point where they don't commit crime.
All highly suggestive of what the actual problem is here.
The second problem is here: "If those people exist, then you're misattributing the source of this crime to the vehicle, when all along, it was with the individual." This is an example of the "single cause" fallacy. From there on, all your claims fall like a line of dominoes.
They can also take proactive measures, like leaving bait cars and arresting the people who steal those. There was a very amusing television series made out of the footage from this.
> When you have somebody actively looking to steal $THING, they will find it and steal it.
The goal is to remove these people from the general population. I don’t actually think deterrence works; these people just need to be identified, caught, and incarcerated until they outgrow their antisocial behavior.
That's why when a speed camera is installed, it makes no difference whatsoever and everyone goes exactly the same speed they would have gone before.
Kia/Hyundai went cheap on the lock system & the cities having a huge wave of auto thefts aren't putting people in jail for it, so it continues.
Chronology matters.
Consider it more like selling locks that don’t lock properly to customers who expect their locks to work like any other lock, then blaming criminals for taking advantage of the situation. Because that’s exactly what they’re trying to do.
And of course it’s also specific to the manufacturer and almost all other manufacturers don’t have this problem.
So while it can technically be “blamed on the criminals” it’s objectively incorrect. It’s also objectively incorrect to blame the police for not doing their job. Or for customers for not keeping their cars safe. This is a product defect from the manufacturer that has killed a lot of people at this point and which they need to take care of, and this whole line of reasoning is their attempt to deflect legal responsibility as the situation is getting completely out of hand.
Almost all security that isn’t lethal is deterrance not solution.
I have already preempveoy addressed this argument (which — respectfully — is a favorite HN counterpoint every time locks and security come up) in another comment, but here is the heart of it here:
But what about locks? You said locks before but locks aren’t that secure. The term “fitness for purpose” refers to a product or service that is not working as intended or expected. If you don’t sell a car with locks and claim you have a security system, no fault. But if you do and it doesn’t work, fault. Same for locks.
Physical locks are not meant to make things impossible to get to. They just make it hard to get to. No amount of physical locks will ever make something 100% secure because even if they are unpickable, and there are some unpickable locks, physical things can be broken.
The point of physical locks are that it takes the robber time and energy to get around them. If it takes more time and energy to do it most robbers will just go to the next location and hope there is less security.
because of this most people just need convenient locks. Ones that do not take up a lot of space or time to open. It is only when we see extremely valuable things that the higher tech locks that take a lot of space/time/energy to work with.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c7bj5/e...
This isn't a problem that Kia/Hyundai has to deal with so much in their home market. It's a problem exclusive to large American cities. It's not Kia/Hyundai's fault that people in large American cities are fucking thieves in record numbers.
The locks on your house are just as insecure as on these vehicles. Are we at fault when our homes are broken into?
The US could also very easily do as Canada does and require electronic immobilizers on new vehicles. It does not.
The problem here sounds entirely like it's down to Americans and their government.
And I really don't understand what you're on about. Yes, criminals should be blamed for committing crimes. Your argument is akin to saying that if a robber snatches a woman's purse it's her fault for being a weak woman.
My house cannot be opened in seconds with a USB cable https://www.axios.com/2022/08/27/kia-hyundai-thefts-stolen-u...
Nobody is blaming the woman here, they are blaming the purse manufacturer.
Or if they want to look legitimate, a small hammer and a bump key.
As for the purse manufacturer comment, not only is that ludicrous but you missed the point.
People are more likely to steal a car if they can get in and go in seconds.
I'm sorry your own analogy worked against you, try thinking a bit harder next time.
If they sold cars without locks and antitheft all your points would be on point.
When our homes are broken into a the alarm company you paid money to put in an alarm in your house doesn’t actually work and then people die in your house and they still don’t do anything about it, then your close to what is avtually happening.
Spot on about the governments inaction though. That part is entirely correct.
For the locks analogue, most of the advertising for the common homebuilder and homeowner lock varieties are fabrications and lies; it's incredibly easy to get through common locks. In applying the analogue to cars, it works because Ford and Toyotas are harder to steal. But what is the liability in that? Does Kia actively market the safety, security and anti-theft portion of their car like the common lock manufactures do? No-- they do not. That's where your analogue falls apart, specific anti-theft claims (moreso than general "has anti-theft") are not there for Kias, they are there for 'locks'.
There's numerous analogues for this that 'sorta' fit but with widely different outcomes. Is this like victims suing a dress manufacturer for dresses that make them more likely to suffer sexual harassment? Is this like a phone manufacture being sued by those who suffered malware/cyber attacks because they're brand of phones are targeted for vulnerabilities far more then other manufacturers are?
The court of public opinion and the case itself is going to be filled with widely different assessments of what the base 'analogue' should be. This is going to settlement without established caselaw I think, as caselaw established on this would be just such a mess.
I have a phone. It has a Lock Screen and advertising it can be locked. It is easily bypassed. Millions of phones are vulnerable. Manufacturer provides a patch that doesn’t work. Manufacturer fixed the problem on more recent phones with a physical hardware change but chooses not to fix the previously released phones, leaving customers stranded with no solution even though it’s readily available. Over time everyone is getting their phones targeting because thieves arr going after the phone knowing they can get at all the valuable data in addition to a working phone, and easily sell the parts in the phone that have now become scarce due to all the theft — a virtuous feedback loop created by the phone manufacturer.
Manufacturer finally gets sued by a class action for failure it fix and settles the suite for two hundred million and offers 3-5000 per phone to every person affected, but without admitting ‘guilt.’
Users defend phone manufacturer:
Defense: the Lock Screen isn’t needed in the safe country the phones are made in
Reality: that’s ok, they weren’t sold there they were sold in the market that does have less safety and that was true when they were sold.
Also, these products were so poorly designed they are 2/3 of all phone thefts and other manufacturers had no problem providing solutions to this problem and the manufacturer had ample time to do a fix and failed to perform a fix for customers.
FAQ
But what about locks? You said locks before but locks aren’t that secure. The term “fitness for purpose” refers to a product or service that is not working as intended or expected. If you don’t sell a car with locks and claim you have a security system, no fault. But if you do and it doesn’t work, fault. Same for locks.
Physical locks are not meant to make things impossible to get to. They just make it hard to get to. No amount of physical locks will ever make something 100% secure because even if they are unpickable, and there are some unpickable locks, physical things can be broken.
The point of physical locks are that it takes the robber time and energy to get around them. If it takes more time and energy to do it most robbers will just go to the next location and hope there is less security.
because of this most people just need convenient locks. Ones that do not take up a lot of space or time to open.
It is only when we see extremely valuable things that the higher tech locks that take a lot of space/time/energy to work with.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c7bj5/e...
That metaphor doesn’t work! Probably, because Lock Screen failure didn’t lead directly to 8 verifiable deaths (more now) and you can’t die from getting run over by a phone as they are not considered ‘deadly weapons’ like cars, but without the metaphor it’s actually much worse. Imagine a gun safe manufacturer whose locks could be easily bypassed, who knew it, and did nothing even while criminals stole guns and used them on shooting sprees. Probably better metaphor but it’s insensitive to people who are actually experiencing gun violence so I didn’t use it.
Should they have provided a Lock Screen that worked? Yes.
Is the root of the issue the fact that it had a feature that should have worked and didn’t? Yes, and that they provided a fix that didn’t work but claimed it would, and sold a defective product in the first place.
Did they have ample occasion to recall and fix the issue permanently? Yes.
Maybe that metaphor will work better, because there are two issues. One is that something was sold fit for purpose and wasn’t.
Another is that the MFG failed to fix on multiple occasions and didn’t. Only after being sued did they eventually perform to a baseline standard.
Yes, but the NHTSA could have issued a recall!
“At this time, NHTSA has not determined that this issue constitutes either a safety defect or noncompliance requiring a recall,” wrote Cem Hatipoglu, NHTSA's acting associate director for enforcement, referring to the Hyundai and Kia vehicles susceptible to theft because they lack engine immobilizers.*
In particular, Hatipoglu said, the federal standard for automotive safety does not require cars to come with immobilizers, the hardware at the center of the controversy that has put affected vehicle owners on edge.*
Hatipoglu said the standard by which NHTSA would normally issue recalls “does not contemplate actions taken by criminal actors to break open or remove part of the steering column and take out the ignition lock to start a vehicle."
In casual parlance, that's what's called hot-wiring a car.*
The 18 attorneys general, led by Bonta, wrote to the agency in April asking that all vulnerable Hyundai and Kia vehicles manufactured from 2011 to 2022 be recalled and retrofitted with immobilizers to keep them from being stolen.*
"Thefts of these Hyundai and Kia vehicles have led to at least eight deaths, numerous injuries and property damage, and they have diverted significant police and emergency services resources from other priorities," the attorneys general wrote.
The only reason they didn’t issue a recall is that this particular technology is not required by code and the code does not the specific technology that almost all manufacturers are using address theft because up until KIA had this problems there was no need for them to because manufacturers didn’t have this problem. I’m sure code will get looked at in future iterations as the automotive standards slowly evolve.
The root argument that holds water has been made by a couple of people on HN and that is that the US standards aren’t sufficient to address this problem and that is a totally valid argument. Fortunately we have a way to compel manufacturers to fix broken products that kill people: the court system, product defect and class action lawsuit. And they have already settled their first major lawsuit (just California, so only 1/9 of America is covered so far) in which they admit no guilt but will pay you thousands of dollars if it happens to you and you have a police report.
I consider that an omission of guilt, but just lacking the legal admission, don’t you? It’s reasonable to argue against it, but when you choose to pay up instead of fight the accusations there is some degree of statement in that.
The only real debate is whether this is a case if negligence or incompetence.
Sources
https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/hyundai-kia-campaign-pr...
https://www.hbsslaw.com/hyundai-kia-usb-car-theft-defect/faq
The rate of car theft in the United States is over 200 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/191216/reported-motor-ve...)
Kia and Hyundai together have a large majority of the market share in South Korea: https://www.statista.com/statistics/805132/south-korea-leadi...
> Your punishment for having a knife when they searched you would be very different from the thief’s. For him to have a knife was mere misbehavior, tradition, he didn’t know any better. But for you to have one was ‘terrorism.’
Thieves exist. Car makers need to be aware of that and design accordingly. By 2015 every car maker selling in the US except Kia and Hyundai was putting immobilizers in almost all of their new cars. The benefits of immobilizers were well known, with car theft rates declining dramatically in jurisdictions that mandated them.
Also, Hyundai could have predicted this but picked saving few bucks per car, which frankly can be a lot of money. Probably not worth the damage to the brand.
I probably wouldn’t purchase another Hyundai, and I have been really happy with our 2019 Santa Fe and even my dealer is very decent and service has been great.
Does anybody truly believe that stronger locks on cars will make shithead delinquent teenagers stop committing crimes for thrills and find a harmless hobby? Even if you stop them from stealing cars they'll still get their thrills some other way, attacking random people in the street, raiding and smashing up storing, simply just carjacking people.. the list goes on. You can't use technical security measures to prevent all these crimes, even prisons can't stop crimes inside their walls. You need to sic police on the people who get their thrills by breaking the law and fucking with other people.
And miss me with any poverty / systemic nonsense excuses for the criminals; the majority of these cars are being stolen for thrill rides, not for profit to pay rent. The criminals are antisocial assholes who think it's no-consequence fun to break the law. The only way to fix this is to use police and courts to ruin their fun and set an example for younger kids who will otherwise decide to emulate the criminal behavior they see others getting away with.
So do Kia and Hyundai have some share of the blame? Sure, they foolishly believed these American cities are as civilized as the cities advertise themselves as being. They should have done some market research and discovered that so many American urban areas are poorly policed before they cheaped out on the locks. This was all out there for them to know already, they didn't have to learn the hard way. If they had done their research, American crime would have been somebody else's problem instead of egg on their own faces. But they didn't do their research, they lazily believed the advertising and assumed that America is serious about crime like South Korea. In South Korea if you steal cars you'll be thrown in prison for many years, get fed like shit and made to perform hard labor. America coddles criminals and thinks the solution to crime is to coddle them even more. The Americans who excuse this nonsense have more compassion for criminals than they do the victims of crime.
And yes, they use cordless angle grinders.