[bnralt]

> it fed a crime wave, something a number of US cities are suing Kia over

A large part of the crime wave stems from the policies these cities implemented. Many times from the same leaders who are suing Kia now.

For instance, a friend got their car stolen in D.C. After they caught the guy, they let him go with no consequences, because they said he was under 25 and it was the first time they caught him. D.C. recently put a convicted murderer on the sentencing commission who believes that this kind of "it's not really their fault if they're under 25" thinking should be extended to murders as well.

Local politicians even told us there wasn't a crime wave, and that it was just a fake narrative. Then when that stopped working, they started pointing fingers at everyone else they could.

[ethbr1]

It's fair to say that a company which makes cars that can be stolen with only a USB socket bears significant culpability for car thefts.

Anything political doesn't have to be only this reason or only that reason. "Both" is an option too.

   - Kia fucked up, to make more $
   - Some cities have ineffective enforcement

[rcthompson]

> car thefts

To be specific, I don't think the cities are suing over the car thefts. If I understand correctly, they're suing because the availability of easily hacked Kia cars enabled a wave of other crimes, because the criminals knew they had easy access to a getaway vehicle that couldn't be traced back to them.

[grecy]

> It's fair to say that a company which makes cars that can be stolen with only a USB socket bears significant culpability for car thefts.

WHAT?

I don’t have my wallet on a chain, do I have some responsibility if I get pickpocketed?

These criminals are breaking the law, it is ENTIRELY their fault. Any other interpretation has way, way too many logic holes and strange consequences that says it’s our fault when a criminal willingly breaks the law.

[ethbr1]

We're talking about different things.

If your car gets stolen, that's your problem.

If suddenly a massive number of cars are stolen, that's the government's problem. (As now police forces have to deal with criminals trivially obtaining getaway cars)

So it seems reasonable that the manufacturer in question should be sued for the cost of the additional police resources required.

[grecy]

> If suddenly a massive number of cars are stolen, that's the government's problem.

I have no idea why you jump to that conclusion.

The problem is clearly the person breaking the law.

But anyway, going with what you said...

> So it seems reasonable that the manufacturer in question should be sued

Wait, if it's the government's problem, then THEY should be sued for not requiring manufacturers to have these anti-theft devices (as the Canadian government does). The auto manufacturer is building cars precisely as the US government mandated them to.

It seems like you're trying to bend logic to blame anyone and everyone other than the people who are breaking the law.

[ethbr1]

I'm not sure where you're reading that the thief shouldn't also be charged. That's obvious, but if you need me to spell it out: yes.

What I'm talking about is how companies should bear liability for the social consequences of their choices.

[MichaelZuo]

According to what legal theory?

[kortilla]

I’ll take victim blaming for $200, Alex. Breaking into a house is easy as a rock through the window but we don’t sue homebuilders for not putting in stronger glass.

[ethbr1]

So if a window manufacturer decides to save money and not put latches on their windows, enabling them to be opened from the outside at will, and home invasions spike, that manufacturer isn't a large part of the problem?

[bombcar]

Part of the problem and the only cause are not the same thing.

Both Kia and the thieves can be in the wrong. Trying to break it down to one cause is never going to work.

Some car will always be the easiest to steal. People should always take reasonable precautions. But crime is still crime; if someone leaves their car running with the door unlocked as they run into the store and it gets stolen - they made a mistake but the criminal did a crime.

[brookst]

Your use of “only cause” was the first in this discussion.

Lots of people get sued for lots of things. Nowhere does it say that suits can succeed only if the defendant is the sole cause of the problem. See: Takata air bags. Huge liability, but in any given incident it wouldn’t be a problem unless someone else caused an accident. Yet Takata does not get to say “or defective product wouldn’t have been a problem if Mr. Doofus hadn’t rear-ended you”

Binary is great for computers, less good in legal thinking.

[RHSeeger]

> Your use of “only cause” was the first in this discussion.

No, but this statement implied Kia wasn't at fault because someone else committed the crime...

> I’ll take victim blaming for $200, Alex. Breaking into a house is easy as a rock through the window but we don’t sue homebuilders for not putting in stronger glass.

So sure, that was the first use of "only cause"; in the same way that "there was 1 light" and "there weren't multiple lights" aren't the same words; but they contain the same information.

[kortilla]

What an asinine comparison. The criminal maintains full criminal liability even if the it’s an easy crime.

[potato3732842]

No they are not. At best they are a minor contributor. If people want security latches and whatnot they can buy them and pay accordingly. An easy to steal care beats no car every day of the week.

I live in a not great part of what's arguably the bluest state in the nation (which is to say this isn't some dumb red state "tough on crime" thing) and I can't imagine someone being able to go around checking windows or car doors for very long without a free ride in a cop car. Windows here are unlatched from May to September. I bet a lot of those houses have Kias in the driveway that they've had no theft problems with as we only have about a dozen car thefts per year here.

Ford Superduties over a huge year range can be stolen much the same way (you also have to punch out a lock before taking a screwdriver to the column) until very recently as PATS was not standard on the higher GVW stuff but those are expensive trucks so shitting on them doesn't scratch the same "validate my $50k purchase of something else" itch that crapping on Kia does.

[RHSeeger]

And yet we have laws that disallow things that the buyer could just avoid by not purchasing. Because, as a society, we find it unacceptable for vendors to do certain things. And we hold them at fault if the do bad things, even if the buyer had the option to not buy it in the first place.

That being said, how many people buying Kias _knew_ the problem existed? You can't make an educated choice if the information isn't really available to be educated about.

[incrediblydumb]

lol check out rochester ny car theft stats!

[lukan]

But that would be loud, not good for theft. Opening a window or door silent requires a whole different set of special skills.

[naming_the_user]

There's a lot of this sort of thing in the UK at the moment which is really baffling to me.

One extreme is the death sentence, sure.

But on the other end it feels as if there are constant stories of career criminals who just do thing after thing after thing. It's not like someone just accidentally gets caught up in multiple assaults/robberies/break-ins etc. At some point you have to just think, okay, there's no rehabilitating this guy, how do we minimise the damage to society.

[Retric]

It’s far more expensive than you may assume.

Locking 1,000 people up for a decade costs ~1 billion dollars. So even slightly more aggressive policies get expensive fast, and a surprising number of people “age out” of these kinds of crimes. It’s not clear if it’s hormones or what but you’ll see people with extensive rap sheets who end up as productive members of society in their 30’s or 40’s and beyond.

[naming_the_user]

I'm aware that it's expensive but the alternative is pretty horrific.

A person that goes about assaulting people is a significant drain on society. It's not even just monetary, it ruins trust, it ruins the relations between the people who aren't antisocial. It also has the moral hazard effect of increasing the number of others that see that this behaviour ultimately goes unpunished.

As far as I'm concerned, there are very few legitimate reasons to raise taxes, but police and prisons are one of them, they are not problems that individuals can solve in the private sector.

[xattt]

There was another discussion around the Cannonball run, and how it should be allowed because no one gets hurt.

In a way it does, because it ruins trust as the participants treat your presence on the road like an inconvenience.

[CraigJPerry]

>> treat your presence on the road like an inconvenience

Aren’t we all a bit guilty of that? Maybe not all the time - when I see an ambulance whizz past or a fire truck, I’m appreciative of their efforts.

But everyone else? You’re just in the way ultimately. There isn’t much pleasure to be derived in waiting around for someone to have their fair turn at the intersection or whatever.

Obviously as a rational human I’m quite capable of suppressing such thoughts and generally abide by the traffic laws, but the point still stands.

[fennecfoxy]

I don't mind at all, waiting for my turn on the road. What I do mind is not receiving it in kind - in London a lot of people refuse to let you in, they see getting from A to B as some sort of competition. Meanwhile, I'll let a car in in front of me if I have the opportunity, only to be denied it when I need to slip in from a minor road during rush hour. Humans are a selfish species, thank evolution and resource contention.

[xattt]

Most folks don’t get on the road with a superiority complex. If we don’t believe in goodwill actions of others, society falls apart.

[tomp]

> Locking 1,000 people up for a decade costs ~1 billion dollars.

This is a purely political decision, not an inherent cost of jailing.

Your number comes down to $100k per person per year. That’s just insane. Many families earn less than that (post-tax)!

And obviously jail is supposed to be cheaper than non-jail life in the first place, because you’re not paying for luxury, just food, (cheap) rent and security.

[quickthrowman]

That cost includes paying all of the staff (guards, admin, medical, social workers, etc) and maintaining the building(s) and infrastructure, I’m surprised it’s only $100k a year.

[potato3732842]

>Your number comes down to $100k per person per year. That’s just insane. Many families earn less than that (post-tax)!

That's not nearly as bad as I was expecting considering that for every 1-2 prisoners there's a ~$100k employee.

[tomp]

But why? I mean, just put each prisoner in a separate cell, why would you need more than 1 employee per 20-50 prisoners? Ok, maybe 3, for 24 hour rotation... Make sure you never unlock more than a single cell, and keep guns, lots of guns.

[pcwalton]

You need lots of doctors, especially with an aging prison population. Doctors aren't cheap. Not to mention the cost of medicine, which can get very expensive when you consider things like end stage cancer drugs for elderly prisoners who can't be released because they're serving LWOP, and it all must be paid for by the state.

Or consider institution GED classes. You might say, those can easily go on the chopping block to save some money. But then you end up with inmates who are released without a high school diploma and, lacking educational opportunities, are more likely to return to crime. Then they go back into the prison system where they use more state resources than if they had just been given education in the first place. It's easy to imagine scenarios in which programs like that are worthwhile in the long term purely for fiscal reasons even if you care 0% about the welfare of criminals themselves.

[Loudergood]

7 Days a week, vacation/sick coverage, facilities/food/admin

[potato3732842]

>But why?

Low key jobs program at the expense of taxpayers IMO.

[incrediblydumb]

do you just make shit up? you are seriously arguing that the "employee per prisoner" ratio is way way better than public schools.

[Retric]

Prisons operate 24/7 365, so unless you’re thinking of having zero guards for most of the day your estimate is wildly off. Further, there’s real concern that people will escape their cells so there’s a real desire for manpower not just people to watch monitors.

Add admin staff etc, and the numbers escalate quickly.

[staunton]

They just have no space left in the jails, what can you do... I guess they hope that as long as protesters get a spot the damage to society will be manageable.

[wesselbindt]

Canada, a bit more liberal than the US, probably has plenty of cities with such policies in place too. Yet, no crime wave there. These waves were a result of Kia's choices, and quite obviously so.

[TMWNN]

>Yet, no crime wave there.

On the contrary, Canada's rate of stolen cars is only 10% less than the US despite having very few port cities. <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy79dq2n093o>

[wesselbindt]

We're not talking about car theft in general, but about the specific crime waves that occurred after the rollout of the less than secure Kias in the US and the Kias with the proper security measures in Canada.

[edouard-harris]

There's no Kia-specific crime wave in Canada as far as I know (I live there). But there's absolutely a general crime wave of car thefts in Canada, and it's quite plausibly tied to recent policy choices. Of course the effect of policy is going to be additive to the effect of blunders like Kia's. But there's good reason to think it has enough impact on its own to be worth discussing.

[themaninthedark]

I'm kind curious, did Canada have the same spike in the "knockout game" that the US did?

If it did, that would point to a US and Canada crime trend correlation. If not, then you can't just say that the one static variable, city/county level policy and the independent variable, immobilizers, are the only factors.

You have different criminal populations, societal values, amounts of government aid, rehabilitation programs, etc that all play into the analysis.