[Lemmy]

1999 is modern times. Many of us are still driving cars made before that year.

Of the 14 board members, 5 were in the role in 1999. This means people in positions of power and authority within the company today were at the helm when the lies and evasions of the past were spoken, all in the cause of protecting the firms image.

And those same people were in positions of power and authority while they lied about emissions, a deadly lie that will have resulted in human beings losing their lives. That only came to light in 2015, which is indisputably modern times.

To bring things back to topic and keep it relevant, without intense scrutiny and regulation car manufacturers can not be trusted to do what is right for society, humanity, or the planet. The will cheat, deceive and lie in order to reduce expenditure (be it on compensation or developing cleaner, more economical technologies) and thus protect profit margins. When manufacturer whine about jobs being at risk they should be very firmly reminded by governments that the economy, lives and then planet take precedence and in any case, they're full of scaremongering s***.

I pick on VW simply because they're a superb example of a firm with a history of peddling lies and taking the lives of human beings through such behaviour, therefore why should we listen when they make such claims? Yet fools still queue around the block to give them money in exchange for their products.