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> 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. Man

by bnralt 2y ago

> 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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  > 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.
- kortilla 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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 2y ago
        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.
        kortilla 2y ago
        What an asinine comparison. The criminal maintains full criminal liability even if the it’s an easy crime.
        singleshot_ 2y ago
        He was talking about civil liability. The concept you’ve tripped over here is called intervening superseding causes and the criminal only destroys the tortfeasor’s liability if his intervening criminal cause is unforeseeable. Here, because the entire purpose of car immobilizers is theft protection, the thief is foreseeable and his crime does not supersede. I’m a little troubled by your use of the word “asinine” in this context.
  - lukan 2y ago
    But that would be loud, not good for theft. Opening a window or door silent requires a whole different set of special skills.
- grecy 2y ago
  > 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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      > 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 2y ago
        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.
        2y ago
coding123 2y ago
[flagged]
- solraph 2y ago
  Even for the most heinous crimes, the death penalty has one massive glaring practical problem. What if the sentenced person is actually innocent? No amount of apologies or recompensation will bring that person back.
  - a-french-anon 2y ago
    That's not a practical but a moral one. Practically speaking, the errors would be extremely rare and the gains for the whole society massive.
    - dpassens 2y ago
      How is any error rate, no matter how small, acceptable when it comes to killing people?
      - SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
        Parent poster a-french-anon may be wrong or at least is making unsubstantiated wishful claims about costs and benefits - "the errors would be extremely rare" - would they really? And would they be evenly spread over in-groups and out-groups? But at least the question "how is that acceptable?" is in fact a question of a moral nature. It's unacceptable, but it is unacceptable because it is immoral.
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        How is any error rate, no matter how small, acceptable when it comes to locking people up for the rest of their lives? While I don't like the death penalty I don't think it's that different from a very long sentence. I don't think it makes sense to say that any punishment needs an absolutely perfect error rate.
- 2y ago
naming_the_user 2y ago
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.
- staunton 2y ago
  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.
- Retric 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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.
wesselbindt 2y ago
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 2y ago
  >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 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy79dq2n093o>
  - wesselbindt 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - themaninthedark 2y ago
      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.

by bnralt 2y ago

ethbr1 2y ago

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 2y ago
> 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.
kortilla 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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.
      - kortilla 2y ago
        What an asinine comparison. The criminal maintains full criminal liability even if the it’s an easy crime.
        singleshot_ 2y ago
        He was talking about civil liability. The concept you’ve tripped over here is called intervening superseding causes and the criminal only destroys the tortfeasor’s liability if his intervening criminal cause is unforeseeable. Here, because the entire purpose of car immobilizers is theft protection, the thief is foreseeable and his crime does not supersede. I’m a little troubled by your use of the word “asinine” in this context.
- lukan 2y ago
  But that would be loud, not good for theft. Opening a window or door silent requires a whole different set of special skills.
grecy 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    > 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 2y ago
      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.
      - 2y ago

coding123 2y ago

[flagged]

solraph 2y ago
Even for the most heinous crimes, the death penalty has one massive glaring practical problem. What if the sentenced person is actually innocent? No amount of apologies or recompensation will bring that person back.
- a-french-anon 2y ago
  That's not a practical but a moral one. Practically speaking, the errors would be extremely rare and the gains for the whole society massive.
  - dpassens 2y ago
    How is any error rate, no matter how small, acceptable when it comes to killing people?
    - SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
      Parent poster a-french-anon may be wrong or at least is making unsubstantiated wishful claims about costs and benefits - "the errors would be extremely rare" - would they really? And would they be evenly spread over in-groups and out-groups? But at least the question "how is that acceptable?" is in fact a question of a moral nature. It's unacceptable, but it is unacceptable because it is immoral.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      How is any error rate, no matter how small, acceptable when it comes to locking people up for the rest of their lives? While I don't like the death penalty I don't think it's that different from a very long sentence. I don't think it makes sense to say that any punishment needs an absolutely perfect error rate.
2y ago

naming_the_user 2y ago

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.

staunton 2y ago
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.
Retric 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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.

wesselbindt 2y ago

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 2y ago
>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 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy79dq2n093o>
- wesselbindt 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - themaninthedark 2y ago
    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.