As I’ve written previously, Massachusetts has a “right to repair” law requiring motor vehicle manufacturers to use a standard, open interface for accessing service data and to sell tools and technical documentation at fair prices. Last January, several automobile lobbying organizations announced a memorandum of understanding in support of “right to repair” at the US national level. But it’s not the same as law, carries almost no weight, and not one of the automobile manufacturers has endorsed it.
Buckle up, kids, it gets worse.
Not only do the automobile manufacturers not want you to know how to fix your car, they don’t want to know about the potentially lethal defects in your car either.
Siobhan Hughes writing for the Wall Street Journal ($$) reports that automobile manufacturers are afforded extraordinary levels of privacy in reporting defects. When an automobile manufacturer becomes aware of a defect — and especially when it discovers how to fix it — it issues a technical service bulletin (TSB) privately to its dealer network describing the problem and the fix. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) receives all of the TSBs under private cover which it compiles in its private database.
So, defects like the widespread General Motors (GM) ignition switch recall get scant initial attention because the TSBs are private and not available to anyone except dealers and the NHTSA (who apparently does nothing but file it).
Why are the TSBs private? The automobile manufacturers claim copyright on the documents. And apparently use them as something of a profit center, licensing the material to third parties who will only too gladly sell them to you by subscription. The material is also available at a lower cost from the NHTSA, but each TSB must be ordered separately.
Hughes cites an auto manufacturer lobbyist as saying “the bulletins are copyrighted, and technical communications that aren’t aimed at the consumer, but rather trained service technicians and service advisers who do the work.” Right, the industry is just trying to protect us from ourselves, you see; pooh… technical communications.
In a 2012 reauthorization bill, Congress required the US Transportation Department to publish all of the automobile manufacturers “communications to dealers” about defects. Hughes reports that under its interpretation of the law, the NHTSA doesn’t require publication “until the problem has technically been classified as a ‘safety defect.” Because copyright. Hughes notes that the GM ignition switch defect TSBs — after at least 13 deaths (and probably more) still haven’t been published.