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Comment by dvngnt_ | Hacker News Reader

> There are some outliers to this trend — murder rates are up in Washington, D.C.

Carjacking is also pretty rampant now

Carjacking is rampant in large part because of what Kia did, which really ought to land that company in a lake of civil liability. Carjacking, at least as it's practiced in Chicagoland, starts with a burner car that rolls up on the victim to disgorge the armed robbers. Kias, which can be hotwired with a broken USB cable, offered carjackers a literal citywide fleet of burner vehicles.

That's a fascinating argument then Kia's weakness is an explainable phone to an access other otherwise secure cars.

"Toyotas and Hondas were the most commonly stolen car make in the District in 2022, with 501 Toyotas and 413 Hondas reported stolen. Hyundai and Kia were the third and seventh most commonly stolen, respectively, with 355 Hyundais and 192 Kias reported stolen last year.

By comparison, D.C. police data show 1,468 Hyundais and 806 Kias were stolen between Jan. 1 and July 20 of this year, accounting for more than half of the nearly 4,000 car thefts in the District. An I-Team analysis shows that, on average, a Hyundai or Kia is stolen in D.C. every two hours and seven minutes."

Though, people are more worried about armed carjacking which is manufacturer agnostic

The targets of carjackings aren't Kias. Why would you carjack a Kia? You can just pick them up off the street. Carjackers use Kias to steal other kinds of cars.

Isnt carjacking by definition armed? Or at least "pretend to be armed"? Why would the victim not just drive away if the assailant isnt armed?

If that were the case, carjacking numbers would be up wherever Kias circulate, which is clearly not the case. Criminality is rampant not because there are opportunities to commit crime, but because there are people willing to commit them.

They are in fact up where Kias circulate!

Selection bias. Kias circulate in Europe. No carjacking here.

First: you brought up the stat, not me. Like, literally one comment ago. So: super weird rebuttal.

Second: Kias in Europe and Canada have interlocks. They famously do not in the US. You cannot steal a European Kia with an iPhone charger.

That isn't carjacking. That's auto theft. Carjacking is when a criminal takes over a running car, oftentimes via threat of violence. No interlock is stopping that.

Reread the comment and you'll see it's about how easy auto theft enables carjacking.

The stats here on carjacking are so bad that I just avoid taking my car places that show nasty trends on https://crimecards.dc.gov

Example: https://crimecards.dc.gov/stolen%20autos:property%20crimes/a...

The rate of carjackings is a miniscule fraction of what it was when I was a kid learning to drive.

It's dropped from over 0.5 per 100k to around 0.1 per 100k over the last 30 years.

I don't fall into the trap of focusing on year-on-year changes, but instead I look at trends because my primary concern is "are things safer for my kids than they were for me when I was a kid".

And the answer is yes.

They are.

By a lot.

I wonder if that's because of all the anti abortion polices in red states. Given DC is in Virginia.

Going to be pretty interesting in 30 years when all the red states suddenly have a massive up spike in crimes and super predators

I believe this is the Freakonomics theory.

Yup :D We'll have some new data at the least.

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