Here’s a truly dumb take, courtesy of The New York Times: “Kia and Hyundai Helped Enable a Crime Wave. They Should Pay for It.”
Wait, you ask: Are Kia and Hyundai hiring gangs of criminals to steal each other’s vehicles? Not exactly. Apparently, they just didn’t take enough precautions to prevent people from stealing their vehicles.
I’m not kidding.
According to the Council on Criminal Justice, the number of vehicle thefts during the first half of 2023 was 33.5% higher on average than during the same period in 2022. As data from Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago, New Orleans, Buffalo and Durham, North Carolina showed, motor vehicle thefts have more than doubled this year relative to last year, according to statistics.
Why are so many cars getting stolen? Apparently it’s the fault of the car. The car wanted it. It needed to be stolen. That’s the way this works. It’s not the criminal — the car was just sitting there — and the criminal was not a criminal. It was just someone like you walking down the street like a normal human, never having stolen a car in your life, and there you saw it in the pure summer sunshine, a Kia. And you say to yourself, “Let’s do this thing. The time has come. That is the easiest car to steal.”
So, drawn like a moth to the flame, you walked over to the Kia and you said, “That might not be a very nice car, I wasn’t desperate for any of Kia’s brands, but now that I see it gleaming in the summer sunshine and I know it’s super easy to steal, I — a lifelong law-abiding citizen — have decided to steal the Kia.”
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This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Try this: There was a knife. It was sitting there in plain sight, and you were just drawn to it. You couldn’t stop yourself, so you stabbed your friend in the eyeball. You should probably sue the knife manufacturer.
Apparently, Hyundai and Kia did not equip some of their cars with electronic immobilizer devices that prevent cars from starting unless they detect a radio I.D. code associated with the car’s rightful key. A couple of years ago, videos showing how to hotwire the vulnerable cars began to pop-up online.
Hundreds of the stolen cars have been involved in numerous deadly crashes, armed robbery sprees, and other crimes around the country.
But the thieves are not to blame for this. It was the car’s fault. I simply can’t believe they programmed these cars to perform armed robbery. Did you know that if you create a product that when it’s stolen, it’s your fault?
This is how dumb we’ve become. How about some basic level of personal responsibility? Ah, but that might require more police, more active policing, more throwing criminals in jail and leaving them in jail.
This is truly basic stuff, but not to those morons at The New York Times.