Consumer-unfriendly designs resist right to repair

The nation is in the grip of a battle over right-to-repair laws. I'm a fan.

Right to repair ensures consumers' ability to repair, or to have repaired, the products they own without having to go back to the original manufacturer. Corporations in the tech era have sought to lock down their products and the business of servicing them, both to profit from service and to protect intellectual property. The behavior is anti-competitive and monopolistic, which is to say, it's how things work in America.

Consumers can be kept out of products, and independent repairers can be driven out of business, by legal and design mechanisms. Legally, a consumer might be barred from repairing a product by contractual clauses in product sale and warranty or by clickwrap terms and conditions of software. Right to repair laws are effective to fight back against these limitations.

Product design can exclude consumers from repair access, too, and this is the more challenging problem. Makers always claim that design limitations on repair are incidental or required for the integrity of the product. A car's onboard computer might be accessible only with a proprietary interface, a measure the carmakers says is necessary to protect the consumer from hacking. A cell phone might break when it's not pried opened properly, an inconvenience the maker says is necessary to pack safely the features consumers want into so small a space.

More than half the states had right to repair on the legislative docket in 2023, the National Conference of State Legislatures counted, with new enactments in California, Colorado, New York, and Minnesota. NPR reported recently on the latest from Michigan. The White House and Europe are on board, and Apple seems to have gauged the winds and decided to play nice. 

Apple's strategy is not the norm. Despite the popularity of right to repair and its obvious essentiality for a free market, right to repair has been elusive. Carmakers have been especially resistant.

Massachusetts adopted right to repair by voter initiative in 2012. The legislature came on board the next year. Carmakers resisted at every turn. Voters were compelled in 2020, despite deceptive industry political tactics, to approve another initiative that expressly expanded the law to apply to automobile telematics, that is, cars' onboard diagnostic data. 

Carmakers continue to resist, tying the law up in litigation, with claims such as federal preemption (this blog in July 2022). Federal regulators initially sided with carmakers, but in recent months, pressured and shamed by Massachusetts senators and the White House, have grown indecisive and tried to plot a middle course. The problem is exacerbated with electric vehicles, as carmakers resist right to repair by leveraging the Administration's wish to transition inventory.

In carmakers' latest fit of passive-aggressive resistance to right to repair, they're refusing to include features such as internet connectivity in states such as Massachusetts. If we insist that carmakers share, then they'll pack up their toys and go home.

A car cabin air filter usually is easily accessible behind the glove box.
Not on the 2023 Nissan Versa. (Generic image.)
Matt Woolner via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

I believe I saw for myself last weekend evidence of carmaker resistance-by-design to right to repair. 

My family acquired a 2023 Nissan Versa last year. The dealer purchase and the car itself have been nothing but a series of frustrations and disappointments. The seller was deceptive in pricing and failed to provide standard equipment; I might write about those issues another time. I am shopping for counsel now to bring a design-defect claim against Nissan: also a story for another time. My advice in short: don't buy a Nissan.

My latest micro-frustration was over the cabin air filter. A passenger car's cabin air filter is almost invariably located behind the glove box and easily changeable by the owner. No longer in the 2023 Versa.

Even removal of the glove box first requires the extraction of six screws; the box's latch assembly comes out too, along with two of the screws. It's not easy to replace later. 

Behind the glove box there is ample room for a cabin air filter; it's not there. Rather, a lower side panel in the passenger compartment also must then be removed. The plastic pins for the side panel are not made for repeated removal. So repeated access to the filter seems to ensure that the interior plastic walls will need replacement, too, in time.

Finally, one can reach the filter, though removing it from a too-small access window means squeezing it, thereby diminishing the integrity of the new filter one puts in.

I can imagine no good reason for the relocation of the filter than to make it more difficult for consumers to replace it themselves. And for those who don't and do take the car to a Nissan service provider, the now more involved operation, especially removal and replacement of the glove box, will increase the labor cost. Win-win for Nissan.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Makers are doubling down on consumer-resistant designs.

I want to replace the faulty charging port on my more-than-two-year-old Google Pixel 3 cell phone. One would think it an easy and foreseeably necessary operation to replace an essential external port with pins and contacts that bend, break, and degrade over time, faster than the electronics they serve. 

But I've read online that it's nearly impossible for an amateur such as me to pry the phone open, to access the port's plug-in, without shattering an interior glass panel. Why? To sell me a Pixel 8, I suspect.

Resistance to right to repair through deliberate design will be much harder for consumers to fight than mere terms and conditions or even proprietary codes. Physical design limitations are difficult to detect and disallow. Industry capture of regulators doesn't help.

Right to repair might have won the battle of public opinion, but it's far from becoming consumers' reality.

Denying public access to crash data, did state agency prioritize fear of litigation over public safety?

Map of bicycle and pedestrian accidents
in Providence, R.I., 2009-17, from
Providence Great Streets Master Plan (2020)

Rhode Island authorities appear to have denied public access to road safety data for no reason better than protecting the state from litigation.

For The Providence Journal, Amy Russo reported in June (subscription) on a dispute between the nonprofit advocacy group Providence Streets Coalition (PSC) and the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT). According to the story, RIDOT denied a PSC request under state public records law for access to crash data.

To justify the denial, RIDOT pointed to federal law and state court precedent allowing denial of a public record request when a litigant seeks to support a negligence claim against the government, Russo reported. But there is no litigation related to the PSC request.

The relevant rule seems to be of the kind known to some freedom of information acts (FOIAs) that seeks to keep the FOIA process apart from discovery in litigation. Such provisions are not necessarily hostile to public access, but ensure that FOIAs don't undermine civil procedure. Usually a litigant in discovery has better access to relevant government-defendant records than a public-record requester has because FOIA exemptions from access don't apply. Sensitive information that might be FOIA-exempt can be subject to a protective order under the rules of civil procedure, but still must be disclosed.

It rather turns the rule on its head, then, for RIDOT to resist disclosure when there is no alternative track in discovery for the requester to demand access. If that's indeed what happened, then RIDOT is almost certainly overreaching. The state has ample protection from lawsuits in sovereign immunity. Typically, states cannot be sued merely for failure to act affirmatively to ensure public safety, nor for exercising discretion to prioritize public safety relative to finite resources.

Rather, a litigant must show that officials were bound to follow a specific legal standard and negligently failed to do so. If that's what's going on, then lawsuits are precisely the appropriate mechanism for injured persons to see their interests vindicated and the state held accountable.

Whatever RIDOT's motive, withholding vital safety data from the public is plainly at cross-purposes with public interest. Russo's story observed that other states, "including Texas, Colorado, Florida, California, and Massachusetts," make crash data public. She interviewed Eric Jackson, head of the Connecticut Transportation Institute and Transportation Safety Research Center at the University of Connecticut, which partnered with the Connecticut Department of Transportation to build a public crash database in 2010.

Connecticut did worry that "attorneys and ambulance chasers are going to come after us and basically say you have the data that's showing you where crashes are occurring," Jackson said. But "[s]o far, ... that hasn't come to fruition."

And Jackson pointed out what should be obvious: If the problem is road safety, then secreting data is hardly the answer.

The PSC-RIDOT matter won't come to court, Russo wrote, because PSC obtained the data it wanted from the City of Providence.

The story is Amy Russo, A Providence Organization Wanted Crash Data To Make Streets Safer. RIDOT Said It's Private, Providence J. (June 26, 2023) (subscription).

Federal law shields car dealer in courtesy-car accident

CC0 by Open Grid Scheduler via Flickr

A car dealership could not be held vicariously liable to a pedestrian struck by a courtesy vehicle, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in June.

A New Jersey Mercedes Benz dealer lent a customer, defendant Oke, a courtesy car while Oke's car was being repaired. After traveling to Boston (an apparent excess of the radius permitted by the courtesy-car contract), Oke left the key in the ignition, engine running, and his wife, Steele (no relation), in the passenger seat, while he attended to business. When a parking official demanded that the car be moved, Steele's attempt to do so resulted in collision with, and serious injury to, the pedestrian-plaintiff.

The laws of many states permit an injured person to pursue the owner of a vehicle in vicarious liability, regardless of the owner's fault. In a 2005 federal highway bill, Congress preempted and disallowed no-fault vicarious liability when the vehicle owner is a rental company. According to FindLaw, Congress was troubled by the likes of a $21m vicarious liability award against Budget in New York. The statutory language, "the Graves Amendment," was named for Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), who estimated that vicarious liability awards cost car rental companies some $100m annually, a cost passed on to consumers.

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the Graves Amendment protected the New Jersey car dealer. The courtesy-car arrangement was part of the transaction for car service, the court reasoned, so akin to a rental agreement.

The court thus dismissed claims against the car dealer. However, reversing, the court remanded the plaintiff's claim against Oke for negligent entrustment. The trial court must resolve a question of fact, the court opined, before the negligent entrustment claim can be adjudicated. The plaintiff plausibly alleged that Oke had, under the circumstances, implicitly authorized Steele to move the car if necessary.

The surviving claim based on negligent entrustment provides a worthwhile reminder that, upon other facts, the Graves Amendment does not let car rental companies off the hook for liability theories in negligence, such as negligent entrustment and negligent maintenance.

The case is Garcia v. Steele, No. SJC-13378 (Mass. June 27, 2023) (FindLaw). Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt wrote the court's unanimous opinion.

Horn-blowing law survives First Amendment challenge

Image by allispossible.org.uk CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 via Flickr

A citation for unreasonable horn-blowing is not defective under the First Amendment, the Massachusetts Appeals Court held in February.

The appellant sought relief from a civil motor vehicle infraction carrying a $55 fine. The court set out the facts:

On October 16, 2017, police officers were working as part of a detail as a construction site was being set up at an intersection at the Middlesex Turnpike, "a busy public way in Burlington." This was "causing major traffic delays." [Appellant] pulled into the intersection, "grew impatient," honked his vehicle's horn, and yelled at the officers. "This startled construction workers." [Appellant] drove closer to one of the police officers, honked his vehicle's horn, and insulted the officer. The officer stopped [appellant] and issued him a citation for fifty-five dollars for unnecessarily honking his horn.

The pertinent Massachusetts statute declares: "No person operating a motor vehicle shall sound a bell, horn or other device, nor in any manner operate such motor vehicle so as to make a harsh, objectionable or unreasonable noise." The appellant challenged the statute as unconstitutionally vague and unconstitutionally overbroad facially and as applied.

In First Amendment vagueness analysis, the court explained, a statutory text may be informed by "reasonable construction." And this statute is informed, the court reasoned, by the administrative guidance of the Massachusetts Driver's Manual, a document publication of the Registry of Motor Vehicles. The manual specifies:

Use your horn to:

• Warn pedestrians or other drivers of possible trouble
• Avoid crashes

Do not use your horn to:

• Show anger or complain about other drivers’ mistakes
• Try to get a slower driver to move faster
• Try to get other vehicles moving in a traffic jam

That guidance "comports with the common understanding of what uses of motor vehicle horns are objectionable," the court wrote, so "is not unconstitutionally vague."

The statute also was not substantially overbroad, facially or as applied, the court concluded.

The appellant looked to court decisions in Washington and Oregon striking laws against horn blowing as facially overbroad. But those laws were broader and swept into their prohibitions the use of horns for purposes unrelated to traffic, namely, expressive use in protests. The Massachusetts law pertains only in traffic scenarios.

The court rejected what it characterized as the appellant's after-the-fact effort to characterize his horn-blowing as a protest against police to articulate an as-applied overbreadth challenge. "Horn honking may be expressive when used as a form of protected protest," the court acknowledged. But that's not the same as appellant "honk[ing] his vehicle's horn out of impatience to show his anger at the police officer for creating a traffic jam."

Fine line, but I know it because I see it.

The case is Burlington Police Department v. Hagopian, No. 20-P-1371 (Mass. App. Ct. Feb. 22, 2022). Justice Joseph M. Ditkoff wrote the unanimous opinion of the panel.

'Right to repair' of Mass. Question 1 would close loophole, aid consumers; industry opposition misleads

Teen mechanic in Philippines, 2014
(Rojessa Tiamson-Saceda, USAID, via Pixnio CC0)

Massachusetts has a right-to-repair initiative (Question 1) on the ballot this Election Day.

Voter information explains: "Under the proposed law, manufacturers would not be allowed to require authorization before owners or repair facilities could access mechanical data stored in a motor vehicle’s on-board diagnostic system, except through an authorization process standardized across all makes and models and administered by an entity unaffiliated with the manufacturer."

Passing this initiative should be a no-brainer.  The provision is in fact only an update to an existing law that voters approved in 2012.  Extending the right to repair to "telematic" data, the new law would close a right-to-repair loophole, through which carmakers can shield vehicle data against access by transmitting data out from the vehicle to a proprietary server.  The only source of controversy here should be how we let corporations continuously try to exploit law and technology to evade accountability to consumers and line their pockets with monopolistic product strategies.

The initiative is opposed by the "Coalition for Safe and Secure Data."  The organization's tack is that if you vote yes on Question 1, you'll facilitate domestic violence, because vehicle information can be misused by violent ne'er-do-wells.  The threat is a repulsive red herring, especially considering that telematic data about consumers already are being relocated without subject sign-off.  The Coalition for Safe and Secure Data is not the sheep of consumer privacy advocacy it pretends to be, but a wolf of a trade group, funded to the tune of $25m by the motor vehicle industry to shut down Question 1, according to Commonwealth Magazine.