social-media platform where users post short videos, is a fount of useful information. Type “Kia” into its search bar and the helpful autosuggest adds “boys tutorial”. Click through and the most-liked result is a video explaining how to steal a Hyundai car. A gloved hand pulls the plastic off the steering-wheel housing and then jams a screwdriver into the ignition switch and wrenches it aside. Over rap music a computerised voice says: “this is why you should not buy Kia or Hyundai.
Mr Johnson’s critics accused him of trying to abrogate responsibility for crime. Raymond Lopez, a conservative-leaning alderman, told Fox News the move was from a “socialist playbook”. Yet Chicago’s lawsuit is one of seven to have been filed by cities against the manufacturers so far this year, as car theft has soared across America. Baltimore, New York and Seattle are among the other cities to also be suing.
Yet in 2015, 96% of new cars sold by other manufacturers did come with immobilisers, which cost at most a few hundred dollars. For Kia and Hyundai vehicles, the figure was just 26%. Todd Henderson, a legal scholar at the University of Chicago, says that on the face of it, the cities suing might have a case.