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by coder543 2795 days ago
> I don't want a DIY arduino-hacked ...

This is a professional service being done by the same professionals who you're paying to actually replace the suspension, brakes, brake lines, or other life-critical components. If you can't trust them to make a good judgement on how or whether to reset tamper detection, then how can you trust them to replace your brakes or suspension in the first place? Surely the idea is that some company would develop and test a process for resetting the tamper detection now that it is apparently legal, and then this tool would be provided to mechanic shops.

> and you take full legal responsibility for any accidents this might cause in the future.

Do mechanics take full legal responsibility for any accidents caused by replacing your brakes or other things? I'm sure in cases of egregiously negligent behavior, they could probably be sued, but most of the time it would be very difficult to prove that they were the cause. I don't think this would be any different.

> Nobody should tamper with critical control systems.

If you believe this, it sounds like you buy brand-new-only cars the moment your existing car turns on any kind of fault light. But, assuming you're okay with them swapping in a $2500 replacement instead, do you believe in this idea so strongly that you would pay 10% to 20% of the vehicle's MSRP any time a fault triggers? Keeping in mind that a vehicle's MSRP has very little to do with its used market value. $2500 could easily be 30%+ of a vehicle's actual value at the time that this occurs.

I get where you're coming from, but I think the strength of your language is out of proportion with the suggested repairs.

1 comments

He has a point though... Cars are manufactured in such way that when something fails, the failure is not catastrophic. Car might not be operational, but it is very rare that malfunction causes a crash. With SW I'm not convinced that the same can be accomplished. If you add 3rd party maintainers to the mix, it gets even worse.

I still think the right to repair is worth the risk, just pointing out that it's not so clear cut.

I think your and OPs logic has a fatal assumption: that the quality of work done by a mechanic for a fix is worse than the manufacturer's replacement.

There is a possibility of failure in either one, right? It's people doing the work either way.

The mechanic's professional responsibility is to repair the car. If we're assuming they are too ignorant to do that job, then why go to a third party mechanic in the first place?