Reactionaries have used rising car thefts to justify ineffective tough on crime policies despite widespread knowledge that the increases are largely a result of negligence from Kia and Hyundai and the inability to hold corporations accountable.
It's odd that a federal judge denied a class action lawsuit. I didn't know that they could do that.
This is a ridiculous lawsuit by the city. Why does a car manufacturer have to care about theft at all? I also have no idea why Kia and Hyandai or responsible for Chicago's crime problem. Reactionary crime policies are bad, reactionary abuses of the legal system by incompetent government official who also happen to be pushing those same reactionary crime polices are also bad.
Kia and Hyundai skipped installing industry standard immobilizers in order to save money. The cars are incredibly easy to steal. Kia and Hyundai should be held responsible.
Why does a car manufacturer have to care about theft at all?
This argument doesn't make any sense to me. Why bother with keys and locks then? Is it more practical to expect society to eliminate literally all crime?
I'm sure there are good reasons to dislike this lawsuit, but this isn't one of them.
Should bike manufacturers be sued as well? This seems like a victim blaming mentality to me. When a car gets stolen there is exactly one party to blame. If I create a line of cars that doesn't have key's or locks is that just not allowed according to you? If someone leaves their front door unlocked and they get robbed is it their fault?
If someone makes a dangerous product, it is reasonable to expect them to include appropriate safety features to reduce the risk their product poses to society.
The "victims" here aren't the automobile manufacturers, they're the people whose cars got stolen and those who were run over by a reckless joyrider or shot in a drive-by enabled by criminals having easy access to insecure, easy-to-steal vehicles. These are all people who wouldn't have befallen harm if these vehicles had standard anti-theft features.
The reason nobody's talking about suing bike manufacturers is because nobody was stealing bikes and riding around shooting people or crashing through the sides of buildings.
I think there is absolutely a legal argument that anti-theft features are critical safety features in cars, specifically. Not sure whether that argument will hold up in court, but it's not anywhere near as straightforward as "bike manufacturers don't have to care about theft, why should car manufacturers?"
So wait. Were the only cars stolen in Chicago Kia's? No they weren't so your initial arguement hold no water. Cars were stolen by people regardless of anti-theft features and people were killed in "drive-by's" and joy-rides by people who stole other cars besides Kia's.
Maybe we should try suing the owners of the cars for not "securing their property?" Maybe you shouldn't be able to own a car unless you have a secure place to store it? Sounds like those so-called victims were irresponsible to me.
I hope they get reamed and I recommend people avoid Hyundai/Kia (although note that while technically separate entities, they do share a LOT of engineering and usually work together) since it seems that while they make nice cars on paper and I enjoy mine in a vacuum, there always seems to be some fatal flaw lurking whether by poor engineering or dumb penny pinching/corner cutting. I'm a car dork and while I was comparing everything before settling on buying my affected Sorento, I never once thought to ask "does this car include an immobilizer and have an easy to defeat ignition lock?" and neither did my parents. Even Nissan included immobilizers on their cheapest models a decade ago.