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from the scorn-the-poor-man-as-a-thief-in-country-and-in-towne dept.
Auto loans to borrowers considered subprime, those with credit scores at or below 640, have spiked in the last five years with roughly 25 percent of all new auto loans made last year subprime, a volume of $145 billion in the first three months of this year. Now the NYT reports that before they can drive off the lot, many subprime borrowers must have their car outfitted with a so-called starter interrupt device, which allows lenders to remotely disable the ignition. By simply clicking a mouse or tapping a smartphone, lenders retain the ultimate control. Borrowers must stay current with their payments, or lose access to their vehicle and a leading device maker, PassTime of Littleton, Colo., says its technology has reduced late payments to roughly 7 percent from nearly 29 percent. “The devices are reshaping the dynamics of auto lending by making timely payments as vital to driving a car as gasoline.”
Mary Bolender, who lives in Las Vegas, needed to get her daughter to an emergency room, but her 2005 Chrysler van would not start. Bolender was three days behind on her monthly car payment. Her lender remotely activated a device in her car’s dashboard that prevented her car from starting. Before she could get back on the road, she had to pay more than $389, money she did not have that morning in March. “I felt absolutely helpless,” said Bolender, a single mother who stopped working to care for her daughter. Some borrowers say their cars were disabled when they were only a few days behind on their payments, leaving them stranded in dangerous neighborhoods. Others said their cars were shut down while idling at stoplights. Some described how they could not take their children to school or to doctor’s appointments. One woman in Nevada said her car was shut down while she was driving on the freeway. Attorney Robert Swearingen says there's an old common law principle that a lender can’t “breach the peace” in a repossession. That means they can’t put a person in harm’s way. To Swearingen, that would mean “turning off a car in a bad neighborhood, or for a single female at night.”
(Score: 4, Insightful) by arashi no garou on Friday September 26 2014, @04:17PM
Too many deadbeats around gaming the system and lenders
It's a two-way street. The lenders themselves are predatory, taking advantage of people who already prove that they make poor financial decisions. When you combine that with something like this, where they can deliberately put a driver in harm's way, or even cause an accident (stall a car on a freeway? What the hell??) you have a recipe for disaster. These devices should be outright illegal, or at least heavily regulated so they can't disable starting the car unless it's stationary and the engine is off. Whoever thought remote disabling a car without a clue where it is or what it's doing was a good idea, is a brainless moron.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by scruffybeard on Friday September 26 2014, @05:59PM
From the article it appears that the device only prohibits you from starting your car. So unless the car stalls or you run out of gas, you are able to safely continue to your destination, and are even able to activate a 24-hour reprieve so that you can get the car home. It does appear that there is some room for improvement as one person says it cut off, even though they say they were current on their payments, and that are rules are already on the books mandating that the borrower needs to be more than 10 days late, then allowed another 20 days to respond before the lender can take actions like this.
(Score: 3, Informative) by arashi no garou on Friday September 26 2014, @07:32PM
The problem is that these types of devices are error prone. Back in 2008 I bought a brand new (year model 2008) SUV from a dealership that, unbeknownst to me, was going out of business (Bill Heard Chevrolet, they were in the national news soon after). They were in such a rush to sell the car to me that they left the anti-theft starter interrupt installed. What this device does is listen for a combination of the pulse from the left turn signal, and a transmitter on the grounds of the dealership. Once you leave the dealership, if you don't have the left turn signal engaged when you try to start the car, it won't start. This keeps someone test driving the car from getting very far with it. When I left with the car, about half a mile from the dealership the engine just died. I was driving along at about 35mph at the time, and was able to coast to a stop on the shoulder of the road. Turns out the device was defective, and instead of just preventing me from starting the car, it actually killed the engine's ignition (i.e. spark plug) system while running.
So, while the claims in the article about the cars dying in freeway traffic or at stop lights might sound dubious, I'd say there might be some merit to them. Systems fail all the time, and a cheap, slimy, predatory used car dealer might cheap out on the source for these devices as well.
(Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Friday September 26 2014, @09:58PM
The stall a car on the freeway part is either hyped up, or a major change from before. My son's unit would disable the car once it shuts off. If it was running, it stayed running until the next time it was shut off, then it would not start again.
There was a box on the dash that he entered a code in when he wanted to start it (anti-theft bonus). Wrong code/locked out- no start.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday September 27 2014, @12:39AM
I dunno, to me it sounds like a dream come true. For years I have wished there was an asshole button you could press and aim at the guy cutting you off in traffic or cutting into the front of the line to get on, say, the Brooklyn Bridge. Drive like an asshole? You get a time-out, fella. Of course you could institute a system where you have to get clicks from two or more cars within a half hour to prevent abuse or to account for extenuating circumstances or honest mistakes. But boy would it make the world a better place on the road if the dangerous, selfish people whocause accidents were made to sit still and think about their behavior.
Now if I can figure out how to simulate a cut-off signal from a creditor...
Washington DC delenda est.