NHTSA Backtracks On Its Dumb Opposition To ‘Right To Repair’

Say That Again

from the you-are-not-helping dept

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has backed off of its ill-advised opposition to right to repair after presumably getting an earful from reformers and the Biden administration.

This past June, NHTSA issued guidance advising the auto industry to basically ignore Massachusetts’ new right to repair law, which required that all modern vehicle systems be accessible via a standardized, transparent platform allowing owners and repair shops to access vehicle data via a mobile device. The industry’s justification: the new law would harm consumer privacy and security:

“While NHTSA has stressed that it is important for consumers to continue to have the ability to choose where to have their vehicles serviced and repaired, consumers must be afforded choice in a manner that does not pose an unreasonable risk to motor vehicle safety.”

Except that’s… not true. Not only was the NHTSA’s intervention not helpful and not based in fact, it effectively undermined the Biden Administration’s claims it supports extremely popular right to repair reforms. It also undermined Massachusetts voters, whose representatives had approved the law 75-25.

An auto-industry lawsuit had already delayed implementation of the law. The industry also ran ads falsely claiming it would somehow aid sexual predators. That right to repair reform will harm consumer privacy and security in a litany of terrible ways is the standard argument for repair monopolists like the auto industry, though a recent FTC report found that the lion’s share of those claims simply weren’t true.

According to 404 Media (a new tech news outlet created from Motherboard folks fleeing the Vice bankruptcy mess), the NHTSA is backtracking from its June announcement. In a letter to MA Assistant AG Eric Haskell, the NHTSA said it found a way to “advance our mutual interest in ensuring safe consumer choice for automotive repair and maintenance. NHTSA strongly supports the right to repair.”

Right to repair activists like PIRG’s Nathan Proctor tell 404 Media the damage has already been done:

“We strongly support the goals the agency puts forward—to protect repair choice and maintain safety. However, as it stands, the agency has achieved neither goal,” he said. “Instead, it has allowed a proliferation of serious safety and monopolization issues to continue without meaningful resistance. Let’s hope this new letter signals a change in approach. We don’t plan to stop our work until cars not only are safe, but also enjoy the full slate of Right to Repair protections.”

While the NHTSA doesn’t seem in any rush to hold Tesla meaningfully accountable for the growing pile of corpses created by Tesla’s undercooked and clearly misrepresented “full self driving” car technology, it somehow found the time to undermine a hugely popular, grass roots reform effort. Great job.

Of course that’s how regulatory capture works. Repair monopolists like John Deere, Apple, and the auto industry seed the landscape with all kinds of bullshit about how being able to affordably and easily repair things you fucking own is somehow diabolically dangerous. Captured lawmakers, regulators, and governors then use those claims to either prevent right to repair laws from passing (see: California), or to undermine them if they already have (see: New York).

Filed Under: auto, consumers, independent repair, joe biden, massachusetts, mechanics, nhtsa, regulatory capture, right to repair, security