Federal safety regulator tells carmakers to ignore Mass. car data law

The federal government’s auto safety watchdog dealt a potentially fatal blow on Tuesday to Massachusetts’ controversial automotive right-to-repair law. In a letter to 22 carmakers, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that complying with the Massachusetts Data Access Law would violate federal car safety legislation, because the state law could make it easier for cybercriminals to interfere with sensitive data stored in cars or even take control of vehicles remotely. The state law, enacted after a 2020 voter referendum, has been tied up in federal court challenges by automakers. The Massachusetts Attorney General’s office has refrained from enforcing the law as litigation has dragged on. Frustrated by the slow pace of the lawsuit, Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell announced that enforcement of the law would commence on June 1. But the NHTSA letter, submitted to the court by the US Justice Department, says that only the federal government, not the states, can enact laws that affect vehicle safety. This would seem to increase the likelihood that US District Court Judge Douglas Woodlock will strike down the statute. The Massachusetts law requires automakers who sell cars in Massachusetts to provide consumers and independent repair shops with wireless access to the car’s “telematics” — digital information needed to diagnose the vehicle’s performance. With access to the telematics, independent mechanics can repair these vehicles as readily as authorized dealers. Critics of the law say that it would force carmakers to make vehicles less secure, in order to give repair shops easier access to critical vehicle systems, including steering, acceleration, and braking. They also say that the law would require that access to these systems must be provided by an independent company — not controlled by the automakers and capable of providing data from all makes and models of cars. In effect, a single organization would have access to automotive data from millions of vehicles. Even before the referendum, the NHTSA sent a letter to Massachusetts lawmakers warning about the security risks such a system would pose. — HIAWATHA BRAY