Right To Repair

The news from Beacon Hill recently has all been about some gambling bill, but there was also something important going on. The Senate passed a Right to Repair law in July. Unfortunately, the other day the House session ended without a vote. That means that the bill is dead for this year. A right to repair law simply means that car companies would have to sell the computer codes to independent repair shops. It’s really amazing to me that we can even manage to get that passed, but the lobbying on the part of the car companies was pretty intense. At this point, the service department is a major profit center for car dealers. That means that they’re not going to make it easy for anyone to compete with them.

I think that what car buyers should be able to expect is something closer to the Maker’s Bill of Rights:

• Meaningful and specific parts lists shall be included.

• Cases shall be easy to open.

• Batteries should be replaceable.

• Special tools are allowed only for darn good reasons.

• Profiting by selling expensive special tools is wrong and not making special tools available is even worse.

• Torx is OK; tamperproof is rarely OK.

• Components, not entire sub-assemblies, shall be replaceable.

• Consumables, like fuses and filters, shall be easy to access.

• Circuit boards shall be commented.

• Power from USB is good; power from proprietary power adapters is bad.

• Standard connecters shall have pinouts defined.

• If it snaps shut, it shall snap open.

• Screws better than glues.

• Docs and drivers shall have permalinks and shall reside for all perpetuity at archive.org.

• Ease of repair shall be a design ideal, not an afterthought.

• Metric or standard, not both.

• Schematics shall be included.

Oh well, there’s an old saying in Boston:

Wait till next year.