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I see this belief (that things people bought should always be repairable by the owner) by many but I always feel it’s extremely self-centered. IMO it’s reckless

I see this belief (that things people bought should always be repairable by the owner) by many but I always feel it’s extremely self-centered. IMO it’s reckless to think this way about repairing complex systems that can affect others. Repairing something that you own that only affects you is different from repairing something like a car that could affect others. As a completely fictional example: incorrectly repairing a complex brake system could pose a danger to other drivers and lead to an -otherwise avoidable- accident. EDIT: some responses are focusing too closely on the example of brakes- perhaps it’s not the best way to illustrate my point. Say, instead, your engine broke or your self driving car’s software was malfunctioning. Should you still have the right to repair?

atomical 8y ago
Several years ago I incorrectly replaced brakes on my car. Only one caliper failed and there was plenty of stopping power and warning that something was wrong. It was loud as hell! The mechanic at the garage told me that torquing nuts is tricky because if you under torque the nuts come loose. But sometimes they rust and you need to torque them more than the manufacturer spec. In that case he said that could also lead to failure. He said "we've all been there" to my glum attitude about screwing up the repair. Repairs are not always simple. Hopefully there are other protections in place if one component fails.
userbinator 8y ago
The problem is that taking your line of thought to its logical conclusion, we end up with a dystopian society where the bulk of the knowledge, power, and control is concentrated in a tiny minority and also enforced by such. Everything you do affects everyone else, that's no excuse to take away freedom. "No risk no life."
- dyarosla 8y ago
  I don’t believe that’s the only logical conclusion. Perhaps there should be some base requirement for people who want to repair something- be it a certification or insurance requirement. There could definitely be degrees of freedom for repair on specific items, much like there’s a degree of freedom of usage for particular items. The right to own should not necessarily imply a right to repair for all types of items.
  - chii 8y ago
    > The right to own should not necessarily imply a right to repair for all types of items. the right to repair doesn't necessarily mean you have to do it yourself. To me, the right to repair means the right for a 3rd party to completely understand the innards of a piece of equipment. This way, the manufacturer cannot lock you in, nor can they charge exorbinant prices for repairs. It's really and extension of a free-market. Compete on quality and price, rather than by monopoly or coercion.
  - rmason 8y ago
    That's the best approach, certify him to recycle Tesla's. Make him document what he's done and that his repaired cars pass the same sorts of tests that new Tesla's do. Then require him to have insurance so if something goes wrong because of his efforts then he pays the first two million of any settlement. But let him buy new parts though.
    - janoc 8y ago
      Yep, that would be the ideal way. OTOH, will never happen because there is no such certification system in place even for new cars (and not only Tesla's). New cars pass the homologation process where a few specimen are subjected to various tests (e.g. crash testing and emission tests) and a lot of paperwork is done by the manufacturer certifying compliance with various regulations. That's not realistic for a repaired car. You can't crash-test a one-off vehicle which is the only way to determine structural soundness of some of the repairs he is doing. That's also why such car "recycling" is generally not done. If anything major in the chassis/body is damaged, the car is usually a total loss - it is not economical or even possible to safely repair it and nobody could guarantee the safety of it. The best he can do is to become an authorized mechanic for Tesla (not sure whether Tesla has such program, never owned one). But then he would likely be legally unable to use salvaged parts in his repairs, only new ones.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
    Yes, it should imply a right to repair for all types of items. Mind you, right to repair is a separate question from right to use on public streets. The former is between the manufacturer and the owner, the latter is between the owner and the public/the state. There may be additional requirements to be allowed to use a repaired vehicle on public streets, but the important point is that that is none of the manufacturer's business, the requirements are set by the state, not by the manufacturer.
- abdullahkhalids 8y ago
  One reasonable solution is to pass laws that any given car can only be repaired [1] by someone certified by the manufacturer AND the manufacturer must provide reasonable-costing open-to-anyone training and certification repair courses. Do you see a dystopia emerging from such laws? [1] cosmetics aside obviously
  - petre 8y ago
    Yes. The manufacturer sets the certification bar too high (costs) and sells expensive chip coded spares. "Reasonable costs" is open to interpretation.
  - syshum 8y ago
    All items should be legally repairable by their own. If you are barred from repairing an item by law or policy then you do not own that item
rootusrootus 8y ago
I figure that "repairable by owner" is just a proxy for "repairable by someone who the owner designates which is not necessarily the same company that manufactured the car." In any case, where would you stop? If we decide that only manufacturers are qualified to service things which could potentially affect other people, then the list grows very large in a hurry. We've had mechanics, including owner-mechanics, working on far more complicated machinery than an electric car for a hundred years. It's not nearly as hard as inexperienced people believe.
chrisdhoover 8y ago
So you only take your car to the dealer for repair? You wouldn’t take it to a competent independant mechanic? What if a certified Tesla mechanic got fed up with Elon Musk’s bullshit and opened his own shop? Would that be reckless? BTW brakes are dead simple. Fixing them is a task any self respecting person should be able to do.
- dyarosla 8y ago
  Brakes was an example. Imagine the completely hypothetical situation where your self driving car was malfunctioning due to an OTA update. As the owner of the car, would you say you have a right to go into the software and now modify it? All I’m saying is that there should absolutely be some limit to what you have a right to repair, independent of your ownership.
  - bacon_waffle 8y ago
    > Imagine the completely hypothetical situation where your self driving car was malfunctioning due to an OTA update. As the owner of the car, would you say you have a right to go into the software and now modify it? Yes, if it's my car I would absolutely say I have that right. The way I operate my car is my responsibility too. Would you say that operating a car safely carries less responsibility than repairing one safely?
    - dyarosla 8y ago
      You need a license to operate a car. And insurance.
      - bacon_waffle 8y ago
        Yes, I do need a license to operate a vehicle on the road. But, I actually don't need to buy my own insurance, because I live in New Zealand. Here, we have socialised insurance which covers accidents in general. Vehicle operating fees (handwave) do vary a bit, basically depending on the cost of that type of vehicle to society. We also have 6-monthly or annual safety checks on vehicles (depending on age of vehicle AFAIK; I still haven't owned one newer than mid-90s), if they are to be used on the road. And, we have a thriving car culture, despite my best efforts to get everyone moving on bus/foot/bike, but that's a distraction to the current discussion... When you earn that license to operate your car, part of the deal is that you shouldn't operate your car if you think it might not be safe. That requirement does not go away depending on who fixed it last, or for that matter, the car's entire history. I think there are some serious issues with regulating people's repairs (or just tinkering with) of their own stuff. For a start; I can't imagine a practical implementation of this "car repair license" which would solve any realistic problem, so to me it sounds like a proposal for mostly-useless bureaucracy. Beyond that, I (and my employer) put a lot of value on the knowledge I've gained to be able to competently, to your example, fix my own brakes (two weekends ago, I replaced a wheel bearing - seems to be working fine). I think that adding barriers to technical work effectively dumbs down society in general. It also encourages waste - if the cost of a repair increases (as it probably would, if the licensing requirements increased), then the broken thing is more likely to be discarded wholesale, rather than repaired. Maybe we should move on from this car discussion, and consider other regulated machines in common use. Radios, in particular, seem like an interesting parallel - they operate in a public space and carry safety risks. When radio regulation started, radios were similar complexity to concurrent cars, but now are largely software controlled. Do you think you should be legally prevented from changing the driver/firmware in your WiFi radio or cell phone?
tsomctl 8y ago
There are a number of areas on vehicles where failure can lead to injury or death. The reality, though, is that these systems are designed to fail gracefully, and most people that work on cars know how to respect them. Take brakes for example. If you fuck it up on one wheel, the remaining wheels have more than enough stopping power to get you home. If you have a leak, there's two separate circuits, so you should have at least two wheels that will stop you. In addition, the brake pedal being squishy should alert you to a problem. And the parking brake is normally a steel cable that should always work. And most repair manuals, tutorials, and YouTube videos will tell you about common pitfalls and what to watch out for. And if you think a certified mechanic never makes a mistake, you are sorely mistaken.
- janoc 8y ago
  Absolutely. On the other hand, when you have a guy that welds two halves out of two wrecks together and builds a "new" car out of them or does who knows what with the battery (which is essentially a giant firebomb under the car waiting to go off), I am not surprised Tesla doesn't want to have anything with him. It is mainly a legal liability issue. Those are safety critical parts and the manufacturer doesn't want to be the one getting sued if someone dies in such a vehicle. If the chassis of the car breaks or deforms in an accident because it has been "repaired" after a previous crash and someone gets hurt because of it, that's not the same thing as someone screwing up the brakes. Most people will sue the manufacturer claiming a manufacturing fault, not the mechanic as most mechanics don't repair things like that (car is considered totaled in such case). E.g. in most of Europe a "franken-car" like that wouldn't be even able to pass the mandatory inspection and get registered in the first place. Once the car is considered totaled and bought out by the insurance, they must destroy it so that potentially compromised parts can't find out their way back on the street again (they still do but that's another issue). The consequence is that these "chop shops" resort to buying the registration from an owner of one wreck on a black market (e.g. because they caused the accident and didn't want to get their premiums increased, so they didn't claim it from their insurance - in that case they are left with an useless registration and no car) and "build" a new car to match the registration, which is then sold. It is of course illegal and selling a car like that is fraud (the client would never buy it if they knew the history or not for the asking price). That is also often where most of the stolen cars end up - a stolen car cut up into parts is worth more than selling it whole (and way less risky too). So while I admire the guy's technical skills, here I perfectly understand why Tesla is steering waaay clear of him. This is definitely not the same thing as Apple's laptops - a laptop is not 1-2 tons of metal barreling down a motorway at 100 km/h with a firebomb under the seat.
thaumaturgy 8y ago
So far this is largely a non-issue, because people who like to repair things themselves tend to be biased towards simpler things that they have the capability of repairing, and people who don't care about repairing things tend to be biased towards whatever's shiny and new really complex, and rely on dealer warranties and the like. One notable exception here being farm equipment, where modern farmers want highly-automated equipment to reduce labor costs, but they also want to be able to maintain their equipment themselves. I'm an experienced shadetree mechanic. Rebuilt a couple engines, hotrodded a motor or two. There are all kinds of things that I could have done that would make a vehicle unsafe for public roads. I didn't do those things though, because I wanted a machine that worked, not a machine that was broken. My hunch is that in the real world, people that fix cars themselves are no more dangerous than professional mechanics.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Less dangerous: they have skin in the game if they fuck up.
  - jtwaleson 8y ago
    That certainly helps, but I wouldn't jump straight to "less dangerous", based on my experience with repairing my own hobby old-timer with very little experience. It's easy to overlook a small thing that might affect safety without you knowing it. Also, mechanics get sued for malpractice right?
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      > That certainly helps, but I wouldn't jump straight to "less dangerous", based on my experience with repairing my own hobby old-timer with very little experience. Well, if you do anything with very little experience it will be a more dangerous affair. That's why most people would ask more experienced people to help or would be an apprentice to more experienced people until they are ready to do their own work solo. You don't watch a youtube video and then jump straight to replacing or upgrading your brakes, steering or suspension. > Also, mechanics get sued for malpractice right? Only in sue happy countries.
rrhyne 8y ago
Your brakes example is typical of someone who was never taught to work on their own vehicle. Others have pointed out that it is not dangerous, so I’ll point out that it is emensely rewarding to do this kind of work yourself. Enlist a competent buddy and give it a try.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  Really? Years back I had the brakes completely fail on a classic Mini I'd worked on because one of the pipes wasn't fully tightened and all of the brake fluid pissed out the first time I applied the brakes. Thankfully I managed to grab the handbrake use that to stop (the Mini handbrake is cable powered and independent of the hydraulic system). Do modern cars have anything to mitigate this?
  - chiph 8y ago
    My understanding is that not all classic Minis had dual circuit hydraulic brakes. So if you have one of the originals with a single brake circuits, any leak means you will fail to stop (if fitted with drum brakes, stopping was doubtful anyway)
  - UncleEntity 8y ago
    Pre-modern cars have something to mitigate this, testing your brakes more than a single pedal push before you go out on the road. Kind of sounds like you didn't even bother to bleed the lines which is also asking for a heap of trouble even if you managed to properly repair the entire braking system. I've worked on the brakes on multiple cars and never once took one out for a test drive without triple-checking that I didn't make some stupid mistake that would put other people in danger. Don't get me wrong, I had a couple cars with dodgy brakes over the years but always made sure they were good enough at the time I was driving them -- had this '53 Dodge that I had to bleed the brakes every time I wanted to take it out for a spin because the wheel cylinders were pitted and slowly leaked but always made sure to do a proper job because other people's lives were at risk too.
toast0 8y ago
A car is (or should be) designed to last many decades of service. It may have complex systems, but it's 2018, they should have diagnostic interfaces and service manuals at least as good as pinball machines from the 80s. Full time functionality monitoring and reporting, self tests, etc should be table stakes. Everything should have a diagnostic procedure and a replacement procedure. All of the other car companies manage to do at least that, and they also somehow manage to make replacement parts available too. As a bonus of the internet age, you can publish updated service manuals when unexpected failures are found and a diagnostic procedure and recommended remediation are built. Bad software updates should be fixable by flashing a known good version. I don't expect to have support for 3rd parties to modify firmware to make fixes (but one could hope). If the engine in my out of warranty vehicle breaks, I can (attempt) to fix it myself, bring it to an independent mechanic to fix it or replace it (again, myself or others). If I value the coolness of my car over time and money, I can even replace a functional engine with something better, for some value of better, and subject to environmental regulations.
posting2fast 8y ago
It's extremely reckless to leave out what the general practice to make things likely to break because of some super cheapo part and not be easily repairable does to us and our environment in the long run. You're not even trying to weigh one against the other, you completely ignore a major part of the equation, and the incentive you create to make things needlessly complex or expensive to repair (special or very soft screws in other with mundane widgets being the lightest form of that I guess), if need be by obfuscation. How much damage would be cased by "reckless repairs", and how much damage is currently being caused by fleeced customers? The Amiga came with schematics... that seems like a parallel universe now... and then I realize that was what some kind of golden age of openness to me, probably seems very closed and uptight to what computer scientists in the 60s or so did and experienced. And hey, isn't Linux incredibly complex? What if someone tinkers with the sourcecode, breaks it completely, and ends up exposing very private email someone else send to them to them? What if someone uses a Raspberry Pi to automate their garage door, instead of buying a "professional product", and another person gets harmed or even killed? Those things can happen, and then that person is liable for what they did.. isn't that enough? Or at least enough in most cases? If people repairing cars leads to a lot of accidents, then it's the job of lawmakers to study, recognize and deal with that. It's a farce for all sorts of products being hard to repair because people repairing their stuff is less profitable than them buying more, and then to justify that with safety. If it's about safety, then you have to hand over responsibility. If you find out a new food you invented can carry a new disease if not stored properly, inform the authorities so they can make rules for everyone, instead of doing your own little thing and not telling anyone. Some companies probably don't want that because proper laws would deal with it in respects to how dangerous something is, how much expertise is needed, and so on... not just solely "how much additional money can we squeeze out of it". So it's not about safety (that's not in reference to your comment which I believe is sincere, but in reference to what many companies are doing), that simply doesn't mesh, it's about the desire to control and exploit, to channel people into what companies need/want instead of channeling companies into what people need/want. Being exploited and manipulated in this fashion is a net decrease of safety. That just about everybody who exploits is in turn the exploited pet of others in other areas, that everybody who presumes to be a magician to the plebs is in turn a pleb in the sight of another magician, that doesn't make it better or more fair, it makes it a maelstrom. Our tools get faster and bigger, but we become consumers instead of makers, parrots instead of sources. We hop from raft to raft on a windy river, rather than building and expanding and improving our world. That is just so boring and also dangerous, besides sorely lacking dignity. Anyone who works to change that, no matter in what capacity, I support without ifs and buts. Generally speaking and kind of a tangent, but how much damage is done to the mind by making the world and the objects we use to function and socialize more opaque, so that we become to resigned to either consume or watch? That's hardly on our radar, but I would count on it.

atomical 8y ago

Several years ago I incorrectly replaced brakes on my car. Only one caliper failed and there was plenty of stopping power and warning that something was wrong. It was loud as hell! The mechanic at the garage told me that torquing nuts is tricky because if you under torque the nuts come loose. But sometimes they rust and you need to torque them more than the manufacturer spec. In that case he said that could also lead to failure. He said "we've all been there" to my glum attitude about screwing up the repair. Repairs are not always simple. Hopefully there are other protections in place if one component fails.

userbinator 8y ago

The problem is that taking your line of thought to its logical conclusion, we end up with a dystopian society where the bulk of the knowledge, power, and control is concentrated in a tiny minority and also enforced by such. Everything you do affects everyone else, that's no excuse to take away freedom. "No risk no life."

dyarosla 8y ago
I don’t believe that’s the only logical conclusion. Perhaps there should be some base requirement for people who want to repair something- be it a certification or insurance requirement. There could definitely be degrees of freedom for repair on specific items, much like there’s a degree of freedom of usage for particular items. The right to own should not necessarily imply a right to repair for all types of items.
- chii 8y ago
  > The right to own should not necessarily imply a right to repair for all types of items. the right to repair doesn't necessarily mean you have to do it yourself. To me, the right to repair means the right for a 3rd party to completely understand the innards of a piece of equipment. This way, the manufacturer cannot lock you in, nor can they charge exorbinant prices for repairs. It's really and extension of a free-market. Compete on quality and price, rather than by monopoly or coercion.
- rmason 8y ago
  That's the best approach, certify him to recycle Tesla's. Make him document what he's done and that his repaired cars pass the same sorts of tests that new Tesla's do. Then require him to have insurance so if something goes wrong because of his efforts then he pays the first two million of any settlement. But let him buy new parts though.
  - janoc 8y ago
    Yep, that would be the ideal way. OTOH, will never happen because there is no such certification system in place even for new cars (and not only Tesla's). New cars pass the homologation process where a few specimen are subjected to various tests (e.g. crash testing and emission tests) and a lot of paperwork is done by the manufacturer certifying compliance with various regulations. That's not realistic for a repaired car. You can't crash-test a one-off vehicle which is the only way to determine structural soundness of some of the repairs he is doing. That's also why such car "recycling" is generally not done. If anything major in the chassis/body is damaged, the car is usually a total loss - it is not economical or even possible to safely repair it and nobody could guarantee the safety of it. The best he can do is to become an authorized mechanic for Tesla (not sure whether Tesla has such program, never owned one). But then he would likely be legally unable to use salvaged parts in his repairs, only new ones.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
  Yes, it should imply a right to repair for all types of items. Mind you, right to repair is a separate question from right to use on public streets. The former is between the manufacturer and the owner, the latter is between the owner and the public/the state. There may be additional requirements to be allowed to use a repaired vehicle on public streets, but the important point is that that is none of the manufacturer's business, the requirements are set by the state, not by the manufacturer.
abdullahkhalids 8y ago
One reasonable solution is to pass laws that any given car can only be repaired [1] by someone certified by the manufacturer AND the manufacturer must provide reasonable-costing open-to-anyone training and certification repair courses. Do you see a dystopia emerging from such laws? [1] cosmetics aside obviously
- petre 8y ago
  Yes. The manufacturer sets the certification bar too high (costs) and sells expensive chip coded spares. "Reasonable costs" is open to interpretation.
- syshum 8y ago
  All items should be legally repairable by their own. If you are barred from repairing an item by law or policy then you do not own that item

rootusrootus 8y ago

I figure that "repairable by owner" is just a proxy for "repairable by someone who the owner designates which is not necessarily the same company that manufactured the car." In any case, where would you stop? If we decide that only manufacturers are qualified to service things which could potentially affect other people, then the list grows very large in a hurry. We've had mechanics, including owner-mechanics, working on far more complicated machinery than an electric car for a hundred years. It's not nearly as hard as inexperienced people believe.

chrisdhoover 8y ago

So you only take your car to the dealer for repair? You wouldn’t take it to a competent independant mechanic? What if a certified Tesla mechanic got fed up with Elon Musk’s bullshit and opened his own shop? Would that be reckless? BTW brakes are dead simple. Fixing them is a task any self respecting person should be able to do.

dyarosla 8y ago
Brakes was an example. Imagine the completely hypothetical situation where your self driving car was malfunctioning due to an OTA update. As the owner of the car, would you say you have a right to go into the software and now modify it? All I’m saying is that there should absolutely be some limit to what you have a right to repair, independent of your ownership.
- bacon_waffle 8y ago
  > Imagine the completely hypothetical situation where your self driving car was malfunctioning due to an OTA update. As the owner of the car, would you say you have a right to go into the software and now modify it? Yes, if it's my car I would absolutely say I have that right. The way I operate my car is my responsibility too. Would you say that operating a car safely carries less responsibility than repairing one safely?
  - dyarosla 8y ago
    You need a license to operate a car. And insurance.
    - bacon_waffle 8y ago
      Yes, I do need a license to operate a vehicle on the road. But, I actually don't need to buy my own insurance, because I live in New Zealand. Here, we have socialised insurance which covers accidents in general. Vehicle operating fees (handwave) do vary a bit, basically depending on the cost of that type of vehicle to society. We also have 6-monthly or annual safety checks on vehicles (depending on age of vehicle AFAIK; I still haven't owned one newer than mid-90s), if they are to be used on the road. And, we have a thriving car culture, despite my best efforts to get everyone moving on bus/foot/bike, but that's a distraction to the current discussion... When you earn that license to operate your car, part of the deal is that you shouldn't operate your car if you think it might not be safe. That requirement does not go away depending on who fixed it last, or for that matter, the car's entire history. I think there are some serious issues with regulating people's repairs (or just tinkering with) of their own stuff. For a start; I can't imagine a practical implementation of this "car repair license" which would solve any realistic problem, so to me it sounds like a proposal for mostly-useless bureaucracy. Beyond that, I (and my employer) put a lot of value on the knowledge I've gained to be able to competently, to your example, fix my own brakes (two weekends ago, I replaced a wheel bearing - seems to be working fine). I think that adding barriers to technical work effectively dumbs down society in general. It also encourages waste - if the cost of a repair increases (as it probably would, if the licensing requirements increased), then the broken thing is more likely to be discarded wholesale, rather than repaired. Maybe we should move on from this car discussion, and consider other regulated machines in common use. Radios, in particular, seem like an interesting parallel - they operate in a public space and carry safety risks. When radio regulation started, radios were similar complexity to concurrent cars, but now are largely software controlled. Do you think you should be legally prevented from changing the driver/firmware in your WiFi radio or cell phone?

tsomctl 8y ago

There are a number of areas on vehicles where failure can lead to injury or death. The reality, though, is that these systems are designed to fail gracefully, and most people that work on cars know how to respect them. Take brakes for example. If you fuck it up on one wheel, the remaining wheels have more than enough stopping power to get you home. If you have a leak, there's two separate circuits, so you should have at least two wheels that will stop you. In addition, the brake pedal being squishy should alert you to a problem. And the parking brake is normally a steel cable that should always work. And most repair manuals, tutorials, and YouTube videos will tell you about common pitfalls and what to watch out for. And if you think a certified mechanic never makes a mistake, you are sorely mistaken.

janoc 8y ago
Absolutely. On the other hand, when you have a guy that welds two halves out of two wrecks together and builds a "new" car out of them or does who knows what with the battery (which is essentially a giant firebomb under the car waiting to go off), I am not surprised Tesla doesn't want to have anything with him. It is mainly a legal liability issue. Those are safety critical parts and the manufacturer doesn't want to be the one getting sued if someone dies in such a vehicle. If the chassis of the car breaks or deforms in an accident because it has been "repaired" after a previous crash and someone gets hurt because of it, that's not the same thing as someone screwing up the brakes. Most people will sue the manufacturer claiming a manufacturing fault, not the mechanic as most mechanics don't repair things like that (car is considered totaled in such case). E.g. in most of Europe a "franken-car" like that wouldn't be even able to pass the mandatory inspection and get registered in the first place. Once the car is considered totaled and bought out by the insurance, they must destroy it so that potentially compromised parts can't find out their way back on the street again (they still do but that's another issue). The consequence is that these "chop shops" resort to buying the registration from an owner of one wreck on a black market (e.g. because they caused the accident and didn't want to get their premiums increased, so they didn't claim it from their insurance - in that case they are left with an useless registration and no car) and "build" a new car to match the registration, which is then sold. It is of course illegal and selling a car like that is fraud (the client would never buy it if they knew the history or not for the asking price). That is also often where most of the stolen cars end up - a stolen car cut up into parts is worth more than selling it whole (and way less risky too). So while I admire the guy's technical skills, here I perfectly understand why Tesla is steering waaay clear of him. This is definitely not the same thing as Apple's laptops - a laptop is not 1-2 tons of metal barreling down a motorway at 100 km/h with a firebomb under the seat.

thaumaturgy 8y ago

So far this is largely a non-issue, because people who like to repair things themselves tend to be biased towards simpler things that they have the capability of repairing, and people who don't care about repairing things tend to be biased towards whatever's shiny and new really complex, and rely on dealer warranties and the like. One notable exception here being farm equipment, where modern farmers want highly-automated equipment to reduce labor costs, but they also want to be able to maintain their equipment themselves. I'm an experienced shadetree mechanic. Rebuilt a couple engines, hotrodded a motor or two. There are all kinds of things that I could have done that would make a vehicle unsafe for public roads. I didn't do those things though, because I wanted a machine that worked, not a machine that was broken. My hunch is that in the real world, people that fix cars themselves are no more dangerous than professional mechanics.

jacquesm 8y ago
Less dangerous: they have skin in the game if they fuck up.
- jtwaleson 8y ago
  That certainly helps, but I wouldn't jump straight to "less dangerous", based on my experience with repairing my own hobby old-timer with very little experience. It's easy to overlook a small thing that might affect safety without you knowing it. Also, mechanics get sued for malpractice right?
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    > That certainly helps, but I wouldn't jump straight to "less dangerous", based on my experience with repairing my own hobby old-timer with very little experience. Well, if you do anything with very little experience it will be a more dangerous affair. That's why most people would ask more experienced people to help or would be an apprentice to more experienced people until they are ready to do their own work solo. You don't watch a youtube video and then jump straight to replacing or upgrading your brakes, steering or suspension. > Also, mechanics get sued for malpractice right? Only in sue happy countries.

rrhyne 8y ago

Your brakes example is typical of someone who was never taught to work on their own vehicle. Others have pointed out that it is not dangerous, so I’ll point out that it is emensely rewarding to do this kind of work yourself. Enlist a competent buddy and give it a try.

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
Really? Years back I had the brakes completely fail on a classic Mini I'd worked on because one of the pipes wasn't fully tightened and all of the brake fluid pissed out the first time I applied the brakes. Thankfully I managed to grab the handbrake use that to stop (the Mini handbrake is cable powered and independent of the hydraulic system). Do modern cars have anything to mitigate this?
- chiph 8y ago
  My understanding is that not all classic Minis had dual circuit hydraulic brakes. So if you have one of the originals with a single brake circuits, any leak means you will fail to stop (if fitted with drum brakes, stopping was doubtful anyway)
- UncleEntity 8y ago
  Pre-modern cars have something to mitigate this, testing your brakes more than a single pedal push before you go out on the road. Kind of sounds like you didn't even bother to bleed the lines which is also asking for a heap of trouble even if you managed to properly repair the entire braking system. I've worked on the brakes on multiple cars and never once took one out for a test drive without triple-checking that I didn't make some stupid mistake that would put other people in danger. Don't get me wrong, I had a couple cars with dodgy brakes over the years but always made sure they were good enough at the time I was driving them -- had this '53 Dodge that I had to bleed the brakes every time I wanted to take it out for a spin because the wheel cylinders were pitted and slowly leaked but always made sure to do a proper job because other people's lives were at risk too.

toast0 8y ago

A car is (or should be) designed to last many decades of service. It may have complex systems, but it's 2018, they should have diagnostic interfaces and service manuals at least as good as pinball machines from the 80s. Full time functionality monitoring and reporting, self tests, etc should be table stakes. Everything should have a diagnostic procedure and a replacement procedure. All of the other car companies manage to do at least that, and they also somehow manage to make replacement parts available too. As a bonus of the internet age, you can publish updated service manuals when unexpected failures are found and a diagnostic procedure and recommended remediation are built. Bad software updates should be fixable by flashing a known good version. I don't expect to have support for 3rd parties to modify firmware to make fixes (but one could hope). If the engine in my out of warranty vehicle breaks, I can (attempt) to fix it myself, bring it to an independent mechanic to fix it or replace it (again, myself or others). If I value the coolness of my car over time and money, I can even replace a functional engine with something better, for some value of better, and subject to environmental regulations.

posting2fast 8y ago

It's extremely reckless to leave out what the general practice to make things likely to break because of some super cheapo part and not be easily repairable does to us and our environment in the long run. You're not even trying to weigh one against the other, you completely ignore a major part of the equation, and the incentive you create to make things needlessly complex or expensive to repair (special or very soft screws in other with mundane widgets being the lightest form of that I guess), if need be by obfuscation. How much damage would be cased by "reckless repairs", and how much damage is currently being caused by fleeced customers? The Amiga came with schematics... that seems like a parallel universe now... and then I realize that was what some kind of golden age of openness to me, probably seems very closed and uptight to what computer scientists in the 60s or so did and experienced. And hey, isn't Linux incredibly complex? What if someone tinkers with the sourcecode, breaks it completely, and ends up exposing very private email someone else send to them to them? What if someone uses a Raspberry Pi to automate their garage door, instead of buying a "professional product", and another person gets harmed or even killed? Those things can happen, and then that person is liable for what they did.. isn't that enough? Or at least enough in most cases? If people repairing cars leads to a lot of accidents, then it's the job of lawmakers to study, recognize and deal with that. It's a farce for all sorts of products being hard to repair because people repairing their stuff is less profitable than them buying more, and then to justify that with safety. If it's about safety, then you have to hand over responsibility. If you find out a new food you invented can carry a new disease if not stored properly, inform the authorities so they can make rules for everyone, instead of doing your own little thing and not telling anyone. Some companies probably don't want that because proper laws would deal with it in respects to how dangerous something is, how much expertise is needed, and so on... not just solely "how much additional money can we squeeze out of it". So it's not about safety (that's not in reference to your comment which I believe is sincere, but in reference to what many companies are doing), that simply doesn't mesh, it's about the desire to control and exploit, to channel people into what companies need/want instead of channeling companies into what people need/want. Being exploited and manipulated in this fashion is a net decrease of safety. That just about everybody who exploits is in turn the exploited pet of others in other areas, that everybody who presumes to be a magician to the plebs is in turn a pleb in the sight of another magician, that doesn't make it better or more fair, it makes it a maelstrom. Our tools get faster and bigger, but we become consumers instead of makers, parrots instead of sources. We hop from raft to raft on a windy river, rather than building and expanding and improving our world. That is just so boring and also dangerous, besides sorely lacking dignity. Anyone who works to change that, no matter in what capacity, I support without ifs and buts. Generally speaking and kind of a tangent, but how much damage is done to the mind by making the world and the objects we use to function and socialize more opaque, so that we become to resigned to either consume or watch? That's hardly on our radar, but I would count on it.