The Commercial Vehicle Solutions Network (CVSN), led by Commercial Vehicle Right to Repair Coalition Chairman Marc Karon of Total Truck Parts, announced Tuesday it has received enough signatures to get on the ballot in Massachusetts in November with an initiative that will mandate vehicle manufacturers to give universal access of telematics information to service shops and fleets.
CVSN says this key step for the Coalition, which hopes to provide the independent aftermarket access to crucial repair information. CVSN says in recent years more manufacturers have started eliminating diagnostic access directly from the vehicle diagnostic port, and CVSN states in the near future the only access to vehicle diagnostics will be through telematics communication.
The current Right to Repair law that exists in Massachusetts excludes telematics, so CVSN says it became vital to develop a ballot initiative for vehicle owners and their ability to select where they want their vehicles repaired.
CVSN invested heavily in a lobbyist to make sure commercial vehicles were included in the ballot initiative. CVSN notes Karon would like to thank Frank Camerota from Camerota Truck Parts and Mike Harris from FleetPride for their assistance in procuring signatures on the petitions.
Those in charge of securing the ballot initiative add the efforts are vital to protecting the rights of independent repair shops to access the data they need to fix vehicles of all makes and models. Voters in Massachusetts in 2012 approved a Right to Repair law that the coalition now hopes to expand to cover telematics systems that can wirelessly transit a vehicle’s mechanical data to manufacturers.
