Hacker News Reader

Comment by madphilosopher | Hacker News Reader

Vulnerabilities like this lead to car thefts. Some models of cars are more susceptible than others, and the manufacturers seem unwilling to fix the problem. The insurance companies know which models are more trouble for them, and so they set higher rates for these, which punishes the driver/owner for something outside of their control.

My solution? Require the manufacturers of vulnerable models to pay the insurance on behalf of the driver/owner as long as the vulnerabilities go unfixed.

View on HN

part of what helps is, at least, before buying a car, to get insurance quotes and then you see the true cost of THAT car

Consumer Reports will also inform you of things like this in advance, if you look. (For this and 100 other reasons, It's worth paying for a digital sub.)

Consumer Reports reporting is bought and paid for by the OEMs. They'll make a big issue out of nothing or minimize real issues depending on where the money is coming from. This goes back at least as far as the Samurai rollover scandal.

Pretty much all industry journalism where the journalists depend on being in the good graces of the manufacturers to get the access they need to make their content is like this.

Consumer Reports buys all the items they review, anonymously.

That doesn't stop them from doing questionable stuff and playing favorites. All this was aired publicly in the lawsuit Suzuki filed.

Yes, many people make many claims. You should think about which ones to believe.

i don't know how you can say they play favorites. internal memos show that suzuki knew that they had a rollover issue because of the narrow wheelbase and CR called them out on it through testing.

The vehicle proved to be equal or less rollover prone than the competition (especially the Bronco II which IIRC holds the record for the most rolled over vehicle) in actual service and per the stats compiled over the years by the NHTSA

So it really kind of begs the question what axe CR was grinding. In the lawsuit it came out that one of the writers managed to put it on two wheels incidentally not part of the tests and that they monkeyed with the tests they were running to try and replicate that.

Is that total rollovers or rollovers per mile? Because there were a hell of lot more Broncos on the road than Suzuki ever sold across their entire lineup.

We're talking about the Bronco 2 here, not the normal Bronco. Rollovers compared to production numbers. Someone crunched the numbers and IIRC it comes out to 20-something percent of Bronco 2s were rolled. I can't find those numbers but I did find that the fatality rate almost doubles the Samarui.

https://www.motortrend.com/features/ford-bronco-ii-history-e...

And I found this hilarious gem:

https://www.broncocorral.com/articles/ford-bronco-ii-rollove...

I don't think anyone would expect to do a 30mph J turn in anything except the most car-like of modern SUVs and expect to maintain upright. Perhaps getting away with that sort of stuff is a reflection of the kind of tires they had at the time.

This is quite literally the opposite of true. Consumer Reports remains the shining exception to this practice, unlike Wirecutter, etc.

Yea, tell that to Suzuki.

My friends Truck was stolen by some people with a tow truck. Key access doesn't really matter in the long run.

If you want to prevent theft, you have to make stealing "expensive" enough for people not to bother with it.

Which is harder for the average thief to acquire, a bluetooth "kit" off a shady website or a friggin' tow truck?

There are phone thieves in San Francisco/Oakland literally driving Audis and BMWs. Trucks bring in a lot of value. A tow truck is also inconspicuous looking, people can think its a repo truck or towing someone parked illegally.

A (new enough) tow truck screams "I have an ongoing business relationship with people who have badges, guns and letters of marque that give them permission to ruin and/or end your life at their discretion" which is really why none of the people who would perhaps bother a common thief or stick their nose in anything out of the ordinary will get near a tow truck.

You could roll up to a parking lot with active security and snatch something with a tow truck and they won't bother you most of the time whereas if you rolled up to engage in swapping a battery or some other legitimate repair they'd probably at least come over and ask what you're up to.

Do people not look at the operating costs before buying a vehicle? Do they really just negotiate a monthly payment and get surprised at the amount they have to pay for fuel/maintenance/insurance?

When I bought my most recent car I had a spreadsheet which projected fuel (whether that's gas, electricity, or gas+electricity) and maintenance costs (there was some ball-parking here) for a dozen different models based on our driving habits. Once the list was narrowed down a bit I did some online quotes at my insurance company to add that in.

There were no financial surprises when I bought the car.

This is unnecessarily self-congratulating. The problem is that vulnerabilities are found in cars after they are on the market for a while and already purchased, so existing owners get their rates hiked, but the manufacturer never fixes the issue. No amount of research is going to guarantee your operating cost next year.

> When I bought my most recent car I had a spreadsheet

Yeah so already different from like 90% of car buyers out there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com