Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeB1972
Now, how do you stand on if your car insurance is invalidated or not due to fiddling?
This means you are now driving without insurance which is, here at least, illegal.
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It depends on whether the fiddling actually causes something to be outside what the insurance company agreed to cover. Most insurance companies want to know if you souped up a vehicle and if you want to soup it up, insure it souped up. If it's an illegal souping, well, the law already covers that. If someone fiddles and fixes their car or figures out what is wrong by reading the software or buys a second-hand part to fix, that's between the person and the car.
I get that there are people out there doing weird over-the-top changes. Fine. Invalidate them. Don't make the rest of us lose our inability to fix cars ourselves or read the software to tell what is wrong and so on. The car companies can claim it is for safety reasons and/or to protect the software, but the reality is that it would also make them money by locking people into going to dealers (and they are in cahoots with dealers and the government is often in cahoots with dealers--else why wouldn't they allow Tesla to sell without a dealership? Oh, because the dealers don't want a direct sales model and they pay taxes and have an in with with politicians.)
I'm not against safety, but go after those who might be causing a real problem. Don't punish DIY people or small operations that fix vehicles. The market is small enough as it is. I don't want to be forced to go to a dealer to find out that my engine light is telling me that my gas cap is not screwed all the way on or that the sensor is broken on the gas cap (this has happened to me and two relatives.) At present, you can figure this out yourself in some cases, but if the sensor is going, most people already have to go have the dealer read the software. This can mean a 200 mile trip for some people in rural areas--just to be told the sensor isn't working.
Give us knowledge. Do not lock our hands.