A Preventable Surge of Hyundai and Kia Thefts in the U.S. ⇥ vice.com

Aaron Gordon, writing at the remaining shell of Vice:

For the last three months, I’ve been trying to find an answer to a basic question at the heart of this theft wave: Why didn’t the U.S. follow Canada’s lead and mandate immobilizers, too? If it had, either around the same time as Canada or when it considered new regulations in the mid-2010s, the method of stealing Kias and Hyundais widely popularized in online videos would not be possible, as evidenced by the fact that no similar theft wave is occurring north of the border. (Canada is experiencing its own problems with auto thefts, as explained below, but the trend is tied to organized crime and not centered around Kias and Hyundais or engine immobilizers).

I appreciate Gordon looking into this more than I was able to when I wrote about it earlier this year. TikTok and other social media platforms are being scapegoated for not preventing the spread of the technique behind this wave of thefts when it could have been prevented in the first place by regulators and automakers.