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Automakers try to scuttle Massachusetts ‘right to repair’ law

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51–60 of 137 posts

Re: Automakers try to scuttle Massachusetts ‘right to repair’ law

#51

Insurance companies should get behind Right to Repair. We've so far waited three months and have an $11,0000 price tag to the insurance company on a minor collision that bent our car's front fascia and broke a sensor -- no frame or metal damage. I would have happily repaired on my own if possible just to avoid being without the car for so long. If only I could get those parts and have a decent service manual.

Insurance companies (of any kind) are not incentivized to find the cheapest service. Anything they pay out is passed on via premiums. Indeed, the more expensive service is better because a 2% profit on $1000 makes them 10x more profit than 2% profit on $100. There’s some competition here in that a marketplace of insurance companies can compete on the premiums so there can be downward pressure, sometimes. But for thin…

> That’s why you see things like medical insurance not being aligned with lowering medical costs

Health insurance companies are lambasted all the time for denying coverage for certain procedures or medicines or requiring prior authorizations to prove it is medically necessary or evidence based treatment.

Re: Automakers try to scuttle Massachusetts ‘right to repair’ law

#52

Insurance companies should get behind Right to Repair. We've so far waited three months and have an $11,0000 price tag to the insurance company on a minor collision that bent our car's front fascia and broke a sensor -- no frame or metal damage. I would have happily repaired on my own if possible just to avoid being without the car for so long. If only I could get those parts and have a decent service manual.

Wouldn't an insurance company naturally want to avoid the additional liability of personal, unlicensed repairs? What if someone improperly repairs the brakes on their own car and they fail on the road, causing a collision?

Re: Automakers try to scuttle Massachusetts ‘right to repair’ law

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parking assist is the very definition of bullshit convenience. In this case apparently it's dangerous as well?

>According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), approximately 188,000 passenger vehicles were backing in crashes reported to the police in the United States during 2015…The combination of Rear Vision Camera and Rear Parking Assist reduced backing crash involvement rates by 42%. When Rear Automatic Braking was added to the Rear Vision Camera and Rear Parking Assist, vehicles with all three sy…

I think "Rear Parking Assist" would be better phrased as "Rear Proximity Sensors", as the "Automatic Parking Assist" (which is what I thought we were discussing) only brings a (likely statistically insignificant) marginal risk reduction of 2% and seems to fall under the "bullshit convenience" category. I do agree that the proximity sensors are themselves huge wins but (if I'm understanding correctly) this could be fairly trivially conveyed on the dashboard instead of the infotainment system.

As I see it, the issue here is that it's in automakers interest to tie together the safety improvements (which are great and benefit people) with the cost-reduction mechanisms consolidating controls and monitors into a single screen which seem to conflate operation with infotainment and, I would argue, reduce peoples' safety.

This is only tangentially related but different to the repair question, so I modified what I said a bit to reflect I was going off topic.

Re: Automakers try to scuttle Massachusetts ‘right to repair’ law

#54
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an open secret in the industry that the CAN bus is not authenticated. If you connect, you can read the data on the bus and inject the data on bus. But, that does require physical access to the car and hooking to the wires. Nobody complains that if you hook to the buses on a PC you can own it. Now they have this security concept where every ECU on the car will have their own private key in their own secure enclav…

I hate computers. Seems like lately they're only used to make our lives worse.

It sometimes seems that way, but when you look at how people lived without computers things were worse. Cars in the 1930s were not fuel efficient, polluted a lot, and you have to do things like file the points every couple months. I remember when you called buildings not people - the phone was attached to the wall, and what just a voice device, it didn't hold Wikipedia or current maps to everywhere. However we forget how bad the past really want.

Re: Automakers try to scuttle Massachusetts ‘right to repair’ law

#55

BS? I thought at least one Federal agency suggested that compliance is in fact a Federal crime.

If only it were that simple... The federal agency is NHTSA. The lawyer there who signed the letter about it being a federal crime is Kerry E. Kolodziej. Kolodziej also works at Mayer Brown, the same law firm that fought in court against the Massachusetts law on behalf of Alliance for Automotive Innovation. It is believed the NHTSA letter to automakers was a veiled attempt to circumvent the court battle. It fits squar…

Here's a source to support some of the above the above claims (including a link to PDF of NHTSA letter): https://www.techspot.com/news/99079-biden-administration-car...

There's some interesting context missing from the explanation too, which is that apparently the feds were consulted years ago and they said "it's fine."

The Massachusetts Right to Repair Coalition's response to the NHTSA letter:

On behalf of two million voters and thousands of independent auto repair shops across Massachusetts, we are outraged by the unsolicited, unwarranted, and counterproductive letter from NHTSA that conflicts with the Department of Justice's statement submitted two years ago in federal court stating that there was no federal preemption. NHTSA's letter is irresponsible, having been transmitted without any new evidence and after the conclusion of the federal trial, despite having been asked by the judge to participate in the court proceeding and declining. NHTSA's letter fails to acknowledge the evidence and testimony presented at the trial that demonstrated the viability and security of an open access platform. This is yet another delay tactic the manufacturers are using to thwart the will of their customers, Massachusetts voters who voted 75-25 in favor of their right to get their car repaired where they choose. The FTC, the Biden Administration, and many members of Congress have all come out in support of Right To Repair.

Re: Automakers try to scuttle Massachusetts ‘right to repair’ law

#56
post #52

Insurance companies should get behind Right to Repair. We've so far waited three months and have an $11,0000 price tag to the insurance company on a minor collision that bent our car's front fascia and broke a sensor -- no frame or metal damage. I would have happily repaired on my own if possible just to avoid being without the car for so long. If only I could get those parts and have a decent service manual.

Wouldn't an insurance company naturally want to avoid the additional liability of personal, unlicensed repairs? What if someone improperly repairs the brakes on their own car and they fail on the road, causing a collision?

All repairs are unlicensed.

Re: Automakers try to scuttle Massachusetts ‘right to repair’ law

#57
post #56
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't an insurance company naturally want to avoid the additional liability of personal, unlicensed repairs? What if someone improperly repairs the brakes on their own car and they fail on the road, causing a collision?

All repairs are unlicensed.

The parent was using the term in the context of insurance companies or manufacturers authorizing the repair. Not that of a legal licensing system.

Re: Automakers try to scuttle Massachusetts ‘right to repair’ law

#58
post #9

Current cybersecurity standards enforced in the automotive industry will probably completely kill the possibility of after-market car parts and the usage of used parts in cars. I say this as someone working in this field that has asked a couple of people doing work in this exact direction. I point blank asked them if this will happen, and they just shrugged their shoulders and said... yeah, kinda'.

I also work in the industry and tend to agree. Right now if you get an official replacement ECU on a secured CAN network the device comes from the OEM already set up with the matching SecOC (AES-128) key that the OEM recorded in their backend database at time of manufacturing. But how would this work with a 3rd party ECU?

like this; an ECU is an ECU. match unit to make and model. gap the ECU from remote modifications. an ECU doesnt require keys, they are not part of the required properties of an ECU.

Re: Automakers try to scuttle Massachusetts ‘right to repair’ law

#59
post #56
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't an insurance company naturally want to avoid the additional liability of personal, unlicensed repairs? What if someone improperly repairs the brakes on their own car and they fail on the road, causing a collision?

All repairs are unlicensed.

Maybe the US is different then, because here in Canada auto mechanics are licensed after a ~4 year registered apprenticeship.
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