Emergency workers responded to a wreck that killed one person and sent six teenagers to the hospital early Sunday morning.

Officials with the Florida Highway Patrol say six teens were cruising down Dean Road at a high rate of speed in a stolen Hyundai Santa Fe when they reportedly ran a red light and hit another vehicle, killing its driver.

“This is absolutely devastating," said FHP Lt. Tara Crescenzi. "We have six teens traveling at a high rate of speed, going through a red light, and taking an innocent person’s life.” 

The teens suffered various injuries, but all survived the crash.

“So, it was a 15-year-old with a learners license and who should not have been operating the vehicle at that time of night,” said Crescenzi.

The Hyundai Santa Fe involved in Sunday’s deadly crash belongs to a certain group of Hyundai and Kia vehicles that don’t have engine immobilizers: A mechanism that stops a vehicle's engine from starting up unless the car’s ignition key is present.

Officials say a car without an engine immobilizer is easier to steal, which is why Highway Loss Data Institute reports that Hyundai and Kia cars made between 2015-2019 are being stolen at nearly twice the rate of cars produced by all other manufacturers.

But the problem goes back even further than 2015, according to the Center for Auto Safety, a government watchdog group.

“Kia and Hyundai had not been installing immobilizers on most of their vehicles for decades before that,” said Michael Brooks, the Center for Auto Safety’s executive director. “A lot of manufacturers started in the late ‘90s, mid-2000s, but Kia and Hyundai did not.”

“(That) opened them up to this problem: a hack of some sort that allows anyone to break into a vehicle, open up the steering column, insert a USB cable and start the car without a key,” Brooks said.

But according to Brooks, the automakers aren’t breaking any federal laws.

“I think the Department of Transportation is somewhat at fault here, because they're the ones who left the option not to have an immobilizer,” Brooks said. “Basically, the government said you have a choice: you can either mark your parts for theft protection purposes, or you can put an immobilizer on the vehicle.”

Brooks said he believes Kia and Hyundai went for the “parts marking” option as a cost-saving measure. He said the most effective way to address the problem would be through a federal recall, which would need to come from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). 

But those federal recalls are very rare, Brooks said. The much more common type of recall is voluntary, and comes from the auto manufacturer.

“NHTSA’s role rarely is to order or issue a recall on their own — they mostly rely on manufacturers to do that,” Brooks said. “When NHTSA does it, it’s because a manufacturer has been particularly bad, in a way that requires NHTSA to use its legal authorities. We probably would argue they should do that a lot more. But in this case, they haven’t done that yet.”

Spectrum News asked NHTSA why a federal recall for the problematic vehicles hadn’t yet been issued. In response, the agency provided a written statement which reads in part: “Since last year, NHTSA has repeatedly met with Hyundai and Kia to discuss the causes contributing to the theft vulnerability, review the scope of differing software and hardware in the affected models, and receive regular updates on the companies’ action plans.”

At least as far back as 2021, the Highway Loss Data Institute was reporting that Hyundai and Kia had “lagged behind other manufacturers” in equipping their vehicles with engine immobilizers. Only 26% of their 2015 vehicle series had immobilizers, compared with 96% of all other makes combined, according to the HLDI report. 

NHTSA announced last month that Hyundai and Kia were releasing free, theft-deterrent software that would address the issue. However, that software won’t work for all the affected vehicles, according to Hyundai itself and a letter that 18 state Attorneys General recently sent to NHTSA, requesting a federal recall. 

“Some 2011-2022 model year vehicles without engine immobilizers cannot accommodate the software upgrade,” reads a section of Hyundai’s website created specifically to address the theft concern. “Hyundai will reimburse those owners for their purchase of steering wheel locks.” 

The companies have provided more than 26,000 steering wheel locks to local law enforcement agencies across the country — including the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, which says it held two giveaway events last week.

“Steering wheel locks, however, still would not correct the underlying safety flaw in the vehicles’ starting systems,” according to the federal recall request signed by 18 state Attorneys General last week. 

Florida’s Attorney General did not sign that letter, and did not respond Monday to an inquiry from Spectrum News about the reasoning for not participating.

Although Hyundai and Kia may be trying to address the issue with offers of software upgrades and steering wheel locks, Brooks said those kinds of customer service campaigns aren’t likely to be nearly as effective as a federal recall — mainly, because they’re not subject to the same legal requirements. 

Those campaigns also shift responsibility away from the company that’s actually making the cars, and onto the consumer. 

“If there’s not a federal safety recall on this issue, we won’t see how many vehicle owners received notices that there was a recall; we won’t be able to see how many repairs took place — whether Hyundai and Kia are actually actively fixing the problem, or just paying a lot of lip service,” Brooks said.

NHTSA does publicly track and categorize manufacturer-led recalls on its website. 

Although Kia and Hyundai operate independently, Hyundai is Kia’s parent company, according to its website.

Nationally, vehicle thefts are on the rise: last year they surpassed 1 million for the first time since 2008, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau. Florida ranked fourth in the U.S. for vehicle thefts, in a 6% uptick from 2021.