Our beater late 90s civic was stolen from my work parking lot (after just filling the tank). Police found it a couple weeks later, gas tank still full but of course ripped out entire exhaust system to get the catalytic converter (which after 25 years is there any precious metals left?). Only good part is probably getting more via insurance than I could have selling it or trading it in.
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Would a Darwin Award here be too morbid?
Come to think of it, this is one thing where a blockchain actually can help the process, instead of some random crap like NFT. You need trackable transactions on something like this, and blockchain is actually a decent way to track something like this.
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Can you expand on that? How exactly is some digital record of ownership going to help once the object has been melted down/ had all the precious metals smelted out of it?
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Not to derail the conversation, but this is the same question I asked at a coffee conference a few years back when we had a few companies come in to do a panel on how block chain could help traceability on single source, rainforest friendly, fair trade coffee. One of problem in the industry is non-certified beans getting swapped out for for the certified beans.
How does blockchain help prevent bad actors from overcoming the physical security on the transaction? They had no real answer.
Blockchain does have some interesting uses, but bad guys gonna bad guy, and until that is addressed, it seems to me blockchain is just fancy inventory management.
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Unless I missed something, this wasn’t a summary execution. The unfortunate thief was underneath the vehicle when it started driving, crushing him. It was a FAFO tragedy, but it wasn’t vigilante justice.
Could the driver be lying? Certainly, in which case this would be a murder. But for the moment, this seems like a series of unfortunate events.
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Yes, all of it is still in there.
A catalyst is a substance that makes a chemical reaction easier or more efficient, usually by acting as an intermediate, but remains unchanged after the reaction, and isn’t part of the output.
So the platinum in an automotive catalytic converter never gets “used up”, no matter how much gas passes through it.
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To a thief, a reduced payout for each cat is incentive to steel even more. Theft is still going to be a problem going forward.
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The difference between a blockchain and an ordinary digitally signed transaction is one of trust.
With a digital signature, a certificate issued by a trusted authority represents the identity of the signer; their signature is an attestation that the signed data is legitimate. So if someone submits a transaction, the signer assures everyone that it took place as described. A digital signature takes a few milliseconds of processing, and can be done on a dirt cheap computer chip housed in a credit card. The signed transaction can be stored on a public ledger somewhere, where it can be independently audited. (Certificate Transparency logs are a great example of this.)
With a blockchain, there’s no trusted centralized authority. There’s only the result of intentionally wasteful computations and giant data transfers, needed for each and every transaction.
So that leads to the edge case where a blockchain can be useful: if the parties involved cannot agree on a common trusted authority. For example, let’s suppose you want to sell ethically produced unobtanium, but you live in Panem which has a notoriously corrupt government. An official unobtanium export stamp means only that you paid enough bribes to the right people, and isn’t trusted by consumers around the world. So you and some other ethical unobtanium producers band together and mint your very own blockchain of trustworthy unobtanium certifications, and consumers around the world come to recognize the value of your blockchain. In this case the grassroots authority of your blockchain is more trustworthy than the official alternative.
At least until your blockchain stops being able to properly certify new members or police existing ones, or prevent the substitution of products, and unethical producers devalue your blockchain’s integrity.
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In my province the thefts were starting to get out of hand… a large ring got caught and the thefts went to almost zero. Local dealerships and garages were provided an etching tool to put serial numbers on the converters when the vehicles came in for routine servicing. And a new law for metal recyclers had them report their transactions on these things (need ID & only accept serial-numbered converters… very similar to pawn shops).
Between catching that ring and the recycling bylaw those made a huge dent in the thefts.
We only have ONE vehicle insurer here, they cover about 99% of vehicles on the road and they put a lot of money into these sorts of programs… they spend $1 and avoid $2 payout - it works well. In a state like California with a zillion insurers coordinating a prevention effort would be futile so they’ll just raise the rates.
One of the tricks to avoid the thefts is to park on mud or in a puddle.
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Dbags in jacked up trucks with a set of truck nuts who enjoy rolling coal probably aren’t super law abiding (I know, I know…I’m making a lot of assumptions here).
The alternative to @ficuswhisperer’s comment could be since the CC is so accessible on a lifted truck, it’s amazing it hadn’t already been stolen.
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And it requires a smog check, including a “test only” smog check every few years. No cat = no way to renew registration, at least after the DMV requests a smog check.
I kinda feel bad for the whole situation, but this woman had better get a good attorney and not talk to the police. Is she claiming she acted in self-defense? She probably needs to make that claim, because she had to have understood that there was a person under her truck, and if she wasn’t acting in self defense, there’s no justification for what she did. So she needs to assert that, “I was afraid for my life.” Did she have a reasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily harm just because someone was sawing under her truck? It’s a grey area.
It’s a terrible situation and her action is understandable but she is also in a legal grey area from this.
As others have said, the recycling / scrap industry is pretty lawless, platinum is valuable, etc.
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She’s not going to face criminal charges. There’s a small chance that the thief’s family might try to bring a civil suit, but it will be laughed out of court before the judge orders them to pay her lawyers fees.
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I wouldn’t count on that, and her car insurance probably doesn’t cover intentional acts, which this might be. Really sad situation for everyone involved.
The other individuals who were with the guy under the car might also face felony murder charges (depending on state law).
Do you really believe any judge or jury will look at the facts in this case and see it as an intentional act? Even the late Johnny Cochrane couldn’t have made that one fly.
As for the late scumbag’s confederats, they’re already in custody after making the genius decision to stick around nearby.
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She says she was asleep in her parked vehicle, woke up to a loud sound under her car, and drove away because she was scared and didn’t know what else to do. (Getting out of the vehicle to check is not a safe option for women.)
What part of that makes you think she’s going to be on the hook for a serious charge? It’s literally self defense. If she were a man and shot the guy, there’d be no conviction.
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The precious metals in catalytic converters are also noble metals so they aren’t really going to break down or corrode. What generally happens is over time pollutants coat the metals reducing their effectiveness and clog up the inner structure reducing performance.
It’s a pretty genius invention in how it can passively reduce pollutants by some 90% converting CO and HC to H2O and CO2, and also remove NOx. All with no moving parts or electronics.
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It could happen. She could EASILY make a statement to the police like, “I heard some guy under my car and I hit the gas!” Which would make it an intentional act.
Good news for her, the sheriff’s dept has said they are not recommending charges, calling it a justifiable homicide. The same article doesn’t mention felony murder charges for the dead guy’s colleagues, so they are also lucky in this.
The catalytic converter thing is outta control these days.
Not directly. Basically, metal merchants are HEAVILY FINED for buying raw metal from unapproved vendors as that’s basicaly contraband. The recycler who takes in used cats for recycling has to document the source and transactions on the blockchain. Anything that can’t be verified is assumed to be contraband.
Sure, you can ship it to some 3rd world country to be melted down, but that’s bulk junk that’s easy to catch.
As others have said, the metals don’t break down, but instead get covered in layers that make them less effective. But they do last the life of the vehicle usually.
However, there is some loss of metal! Unbelievably, there are recoverable amounts of platinum in freeway gravel from all the catalytic converters that go by. It’s enough to recover some, not enough to be worth recovering though.
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