The Kia Challenge

A young man saved up money for years, gathering enough money so he could a new car. When he brought his brand new Kia and parked it out front, he felt a sense of satisfaction. Hours later, he woke up to a ringing phone. He picked up, and heard news that someone stole his car and crashed it a mile away.

An internet trend centered around stealing and crashing Kias and Hyundais due to a vulnerability in the models is being committed by a number of Tiktok users. This trend has surfaced a couple years ago, and still persists presently all over America.

The publicity of the trend is sparse, with some Kia and Hyundai owners having little to no knowledge of the challenge in the first place.

“I don’t know anything about it,” freshman Roan Wells said.

It is an unknown occurrence for some owners, but other Kia and Hyundai owners have looked into the incidents to try to prevent their car’s hijacking.

“I heard about it on the Internet,” freshman Emma Lyden said. “The Kia Challenge is on Tiktok. The challenge is to break into a car … hijack it, take it for a joy ride, and record yourself committing a felony.”

Some of those car owners are even aware of the challenge, but uncertain on how to combat it. 

“What can I do?” Wells said. “Be safe, stay in the safe part of town, park my car in a garage.”

The way the crime works is that a person takes a specific object and uses it to exploit the weakness of the car’s model. The vulnerability exists in cars made before a specific date.

“I don’t know how to combat the … jacking,” Lyden said. “You could possibly put a tracker of some kind in a conspicuous place in a vehicle if it ever gets stolen.”

Kia and Hyundai both responded to the increase of car theft with their vehicles. Kia fixed the vulnerability for the 2022 and onward models, and Hyundai added a software patch on all their vehicles for free to help with the theft, and plans to continue their actions in 2023, though some believe there should be more immediate solutions.

“Manufacturers that make these cars should fix this major weakness in security as soon as possible.” Lyden said.

While there has been acknowledgments of these raised crime rates, some believe the issue should be more visible to the public eye.

“I think Kia should recall the model.” Wells said. “They should let owners know what is happening to those cars.”

This dangerous trend is no harmless dare, it is a prompt given to certain people to commit a felony. People should pay attention and take notice so they won’t lose their property on the whim of these trends.