They are either able to contact the original authors for permission or there was something in the repo/forums rules back then that said you give license to the mods of any content you upload. And about the length of copyright, yes, it applies to simple RoR mods unless they're like 10 lines of...
The reason is probably copyright. And no, just because the author isn't contactable anymore doesn't mean that you can do whatever you want with the mods, the copyright is still valid and will still be for a long time (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_term).
The proper way to do this would be to use the ActorSimAttr AngelScript API to set the engine torque to 0 (and optionally the braking force to something higher than normal).
Even though RoR's development direction is very positive, sometimes there are some changes we may not all like.
For example, i found the ActorSimAttr multiplayer anticheat to be quite unjust. RoR is a sandbox game, why have something that prevents you from making your car faster in multiplayer...
Reinstalled and the malware is gone. As i switched to Parabola and my GPU doesn't work without proprietary firmware blobs, i am currently unable to play any 3D game (Except for this one).
This works because the interior camera falls out of the vehicle, which is not a good solution.
As CuriousMike said in https://github.com/RigsOfRods/rigs-of-rods/issues/3213: