Because people want to have to lug their enormous carry-on bags through one of those damned things. Or a gaggle of children. If you think an airport is a slow pain in the ass now, just wait until entry and exit are via single file, one at a time, man-traps.

There's a reason they have an 800+ credit score... they pay their debts. If missed payments become a chronic issue, then they won't have such a stellar score anymore. But they still won't have one of these gadgets in their car. (they'd have to fully default and execute a new loan contract to have it penciled in.)

#3 - "ignition interrupter" - that's what every device manufacturer says it does. I don't know how horribly it has to be mis-installed to get it to do something like kill the engine (or worse.)

#5 - it's not "repossession" as the purchaser still has possession of the vehicle. It's simply been rendered inoperable -- as per your contract -- as a not-so-subtle reminder to pay your bill. And the GPS in the gadget tells the repo man exactly where it is when you have legally defaulted. (instead of needing a dozen spotters running all over looking for it.)

But with the mortgage debacle, banks expended a lot of energy (read: money) evicting and repossessing homes that they ultimately couldn't sell -- for the very reason people were defaulting: everybody's penniless. The used car market is the complete opposite. Repo'd cars are easy to sell -- and in many cases are the very source of used cars. Plus, the down payment is usually 50% or more of the actual, documented, value of the car, so defaulting on a loan 5x the value of the car doesn't amount to much. (assuming they can locate the car, and it's not been destroyed.)

Just a guess... fully bling'd soccer mom mini-van, bought years ago when she was employed. But, yeah, she's getting ripped off by having such horrible credit, and likely financial irresponsibility that created that bad credit. When your car has a device that renders it non-startable when you miss a payment, you f'ing make that payment. In a perfect world, these sorts of devices would reduce, or even eliminate, the "risk premium" since it's making repo absolutely trivial -- the car won't start (without defeating the device), and they know exactly where it is.

Nice try. /tmp (and /var/tmp) are noexec tmpfs's on my webservers. Surprising how many wp and vb problems that stops.

Liar: person who runs out of gas and then blames the i-didn't-pay-my-bill ignition interrupter for the car dying.

Sorry. You obviously know every fucking thing there is to ever fucking know. I stand corrected, ye of 7 digits.

(FYI, I do believe the pipe character is the OR. In PROGRAMMING, but we're using English; a subject you appear to have barely passed in grad school.)

Did you RTFA? No, then STFU.

They aren't talking about lo-jack'ing the car. Then entire point of these "hacks" is to stop the car from starting, not kill the engine going down the freeway, because that's life threatening, law suit inducing, fucking DANGEROUS .

I never said the relay and the solenoid where the same thing. Learn to read. The starter circuit can be interrupted at the relay, the solenoid, or both. The big wire on the starter goes back to the solenoid, and a smaller wire from there to the relay. The starter is pretty easy to find, so that's the logical place to start tracing the system back to where they break it. I wouldn't completely rule out someone putting a second solenoid in there, but it would be silly (and costly) do so.

This isn't an alarm system or anti-theft measure. Those are designed to do things that are a) hard to find, b) hard to remove, and c) take long enough to defeat that you're likely to get caught in the act.

Because a new car will have a higher resell value when the bank repo's it.

Also, you need a better credit score and a better bank.

That used to be true; modern automatics have locking torque converters that eliminate the power loss to the transmission once in gear. (it slips just like a clutch would when changing gears.) Also, a lot of autos are "CVT" these days, so there aren't any gears. The issue of not being able to get it into neutral is often the same bug that stuck the throttle -- the shifter is electronic and the computer is ignoring you. In those cases, the "power button" isn't likely to turn the car off, either.

(Which, btw, is why I bitched about the "race car prius" not having a kill switch -- which is mandated in the rules -- in-line to the ECU. I don't give a single s*** what Toyota says -- they're going to tell you to not modify the car at all -- I want a way to physically disconnect power.)

Cheap cars have zero "bling" so few people want them. There are plenty of old-but-reliable, cheap cars out there. However, few people forced into that market understand enough about cars to know what's reliable and what's a rolling pile of soon-to-be-scrap; and if anything happens to their 1000$ heap, a) they don't know how to fix it, or b) have the money to get it fixed.

If they're trying to sell the car, then it's their responsibility to make it as presentable as possible. A car that doesn't start/run is a pile of scrap metal. It might work, or it might not. If you try to sell *me* a car that doesn't start, I'm going to offer scrap price for it or walking away. I'm not rolling dice.

Most after-market antitheft devices are trivial to remove. Those built into the ECU are much harder to defeat. (in a modern VW/Audi/etc. the immobilizer is linked to every piece of electronics in the car. Including the electric window/lock modules.)

I don't need a manual to locate such a device, or tell you how to bypass it. All it does is stop power from energizing the starter relay/solenoid. The starter is blindingly easy to find; tracing the "big red wire" back to the solenoid isn't very difficult. The only hard part is physically working in a modern cramped engine bay.

All these people whining that it cut the car off in traffic are probably lying, or exaggerating the events greatly (i.e. they stalled the car at a light and it wouldn't restart.)

And they often pay the price for it in court. (fraud and false advertising)

Because they can charge a 1000x markup for that extra flash. When a 64GB mcroSD card can be had for 20$, why should 64GB add hundreds to the cost of a phone? (greed)