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Widow Sues Kia For Engine Immobilizer Absence
A woman whose husband was hit and killed by some minors in a stolen Kia has filed a lawsuit against the automaker. She’s arguing the automaker should be held liable for her late husband’s death because it failed to install an engine immobilizer in the vehicle.
SUV crash takes out two garaged classic cars.
We’ve seen government officials try claiming the same thing, arguing Kia and sister brand Hyundai behaved negligently by not including immobilizers in certain models for years. The move is definitely odd considering almost every mainstream production vehicle by the turn of the century came with an electronic immobilizer.
Some have argued in the past the move was made to cut manufacturing costs, increasing Kia and Hyundai profit margins. It’s possible if that’s true the gains have been more than wiped away by negative public perception of the brands thanks to high theft rates.
According to Courthouse News Service, a 15-year-old kid was driving a stolen Kia Optima in November 2023 through the Columbus, Ohio area at high speeds when he crashed into 36-year-old Matthew Moshi’s car, killing him.
When his widow first filed the wrongful death lawsuit, it was dismissed by the judge. However, after appealing to the Sixth Circuit it’s been consolidated with a similar lawsuit.
The implications a lawsuit like this would have not only for Kia and Hyundai but also the automotive industry as a whole could be huge and far-reaching. After all, no car design is perfect, so where would the line between negligent engineering and just the flaws of any humanmade machine be drawn?
Fueling the trend of kids stealing Kias and Hyundais has been social media posts teaching them how to do it. Social media platforms which have found a way to squelch other forms of expression they don’t seem to agree with not only have allowed car theft tutorials to spread among youth, they’ve allowed videos posted by thieves of themselves joyriding in Kias and Hyundais to go viral.
What we can’t understand is why the social media sites haven’t been targeted in these lawsuits.
Image via Kia
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