In 2007, Canada started requiring all vehicles to have a cheap, effective anti-theft device. The U.S. didn't. Now, it is paying the price with a surge in Kia and Hyundai thefts.
In 2007, Canada started requiring all vehicles to have a cheap, effective anti-theft device. The U.S. didn't. Now, it is paying the price with a surge in Kia and Hyundai thefts.
"In 2005, Transport Canada, a federal agency, decided to do something about it. Starting in 2007, it declared, all passenger vehicles sold in Canada would require an engine immobilizer, a basic anti-theft device that uses an electronic signature in the key to unlock the engine. If the key isn’t present, the car can’t be started. This prevents hot wiring and other old-school, brute force methods of stealing cars."
This is what blows my mind. Like, cars cost tens of thousands of dollars. No one is going to balk at an extra $5 bucks for this feature. If nothing, it’s worth the cost to the manufacturer in PR terms. Now Hyundai/Kia have a bad reputation for car thefts. I’m sure avoiding that would have been worth the $5.
Congress: Does this regulation cut our wealthy briber's "donor's" taxes?
Well no, but it...
Congress: Let us just stop you right there, kindly fuck off. Oh and remember, we're the thin blue/red line between you and oblivion, so remember to re-elect us you stupid fucking sucker poories.
I mean, maybe it's because engine immobilizers have been standard equipment since 1998, and Hyundai/Kia are the only marques that chose to buck the trend? My family's Mercury had an immobilizer... in 1995.
It would require politicians to actually do something, literally anything, that wasn’t motivated by money or meta-political pageantry. Far too much to ask.
In what people call the greatest nation in the world, thousands of regulators simply never thought of the idea of an immobilizer which is something that was already available on a lot of cars. Sure.
More likely is that auto manufacturers bitched that it would make cars too expensive and it should be voluntary while donating to some legislators campaign.
To be fair, immobilizers were standard at the time. Every manufacturer was already using them because using an immobilizer is just common sense. So making a law requiring them to use immobilizers would be like making a law requiring people to wipe their asses. It would have just been seen as useless because everyone is already doing it and who in their right mind would suddenly just stop wiping their ass. It's only fairly recently that kia and huandai have suddenly lost their minds and decided to walk around with shit covered asses. Also from what I've seen every judge that has looked at the issue is already ruling against them because not including an imobilizer is so willfully stupid that it's gross negligence.
I mean yes, but also no. Engine immobilization is good, but it’s easily defeated with $40 worth of electronics and a little know-how (which car theft gangs have and is well documented in the news already).
Immobilizers might stop idiots on tiktok but modern vehicles are more electronic than mechanical, and are built with no concept of security so there are plenty of vulnerabilities for dedicated thieves to use.