Lillian Tweten
Daily Caller News Foundation
Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced Thursday that the city had sued Kia and Hyundai for contributing to violent crimes in Chicago by failing to use anti-theft technology in their vehicles, according to a city press release.
The lawsuit alleges that the two companies did not provide engine immobilizers or steering wheel locks, technologies that would make hotwiring the cars much more difficult, according to the press release. Kia and Hyundai vehicles accounted for 54.3% of all stolen vehicles in Chicago in July 2023 and were used for armed robberies and violent crimes, the lawsuit claimed.
“Unlike the movies, hot-wiring vehicles is far harder than it appears — unless that vehicle was manufactured by Hyundai or Kia,” the lawsuit said. “Kia’s and Hyundai’s unlawful and reckless actions have caused a car theft crisis.”
Thefts of Kia and Hyundai vehicles increased across the nation after trending TikTok videos showed viewers how to hotwire the vehicles using a USB cable, CNBC reported. Chicago vehicle theft rates rose by 767% in 2022 because of this TikTok “challenge,” according to Fox News.
Kia and Hyundai both offered free steering wheel locks in 2022 to areas impacted by the theft, which included Chicago, CNBC reported. Both companies also announced in February that they would provide free anti-theft software updates and steering wheel locks for all of their vehicles that did not have immobilizers, according to a press release by the National Highway and Transportation Safety Agency.
“Kia continues to take action to help our customers by making it more difficult for criminals to use methods of theft recently
The city of Chicago claimed that these preventative measures did little to combat the thefts because the updates required car owners to lock their cars, according to the lawsuit.
“These band-aid solutions are too little, too late,” the lawsuit alleged. “Hyundai notes that for its update to work, the consumer must lock their door with their key or the key fob button in order to set the factory alarm and activate the software’s ‘ignition kill’ feature.”
WND is now on Trump's Truth Social! Follow us @WNDNews
Chicago demanded that Kia and Hyundai pay money for every damage caused by their stolen vehicles on the grounds that the companies had provided “services reasonably related to” criminals’ “violation of any federal, state, or local law,” according to the lawsuit.
Motor vehicle theft in Chicago is currently up 223% from 2021, while overall crime is up 82%, according to a report released by the Chicago Police Department.
Hyundai and the city of Chicago did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
IMPORTANT NOTE TO WND READERS: Today’s ruling elites champion policies every previous generation of Americans would have regarded as outright evil. At the top of that list would be the supremely radioactive issue – illuminated by the hit summer film “Sound of Freedom” – of the widespread trafficking and sexual slavery of children, as well as the shocking prevalence of pedophiles in the United States of America. Indeed, the U.S. is the largest market for child sexual abuse in the world.
According to Tim Ballard, who has led many missions rescuing sex-trafficked children around the world, the Biden administration actually ENABLES AND PROMOTES the trafficking and sexual slavery of children with its horrendous border policies, its push for early sexualization of children, championing children’s “right to consent” on everything including mutilating transgender surgeries, and so on.
“Pedophiles are sitting back right now,” says Ballard, “and going, ‘We’ve been pushing this agenda for decades, and now we don’t have to push any more, because the left is taking care of it for us’ – IN AMERICA!”
Ballard’s concerns are confirmed by Tara Lee Rodas, a Health and Human Services whistleblower who recently testified before Congress that under Joe Biden, “THE U.S. GOVERNMENT HAS BECOME THE MIDDLEMAN IN A LARGE-SCALE, MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR CHILD TRAFFICKING OPERATION.”
But that’s just the beginning. The whole, secret criminal mega-enterprise of child sex trafficking and the global elites’ affinity for pedophilia is exposed as never before in the August issue of WND’s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, in a groundbreaking issue titled “THE NEW AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE: How the Biden regime enables and promotes child sex trafficking in the U.S.A.” WHISTLEBLOWER is available in both the popular print edition and a state-of-the-art digital version, either single issues or discounted annual subscriptions.
SUPPORT TRUTHFUL JOURNALISM. MAKE A DONATION TO THE NONPROFIT WND NEWS CENTER. THANK YOU!
The post Major blue city sues auto companies for making cars too easy to steal appeared first on WND.
