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Trained repair professionals at hospitals are regularly unable to fix medical devices because of manufacturer lockout codes or the inability to obtain repair parts. During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, broken ventilators sat unrepaired for weeks or months as manufacturers were overwhelmed with repair requests and independent repair professionals were locked out of them. At the time, I reported that independent repair techs had resorted to creating DIY dongles loaded with jailbroken Ukrainian firmware to fix ventilators without manufacturer permission. Medical device manufacturers also threatened iFixit because it posted ventilator repair manuals on its website. I have also written about people with sleep apnea who have hacked their CPAP machines to improve their basic functionality and to repair them.
PS: he got it repaired.
If inspection or monitoring were mandatory you’d have a point. But it isn’t mandatory. Not everywhere. Not even most places. Only 19 of the 50 states require vehicle safety inspections periodically. So at most the vast majority of vehicles probably haven’t had one since the car was new unless the state where that car is registered requires it. For a country that’s very car dependent with car accidents being one of the leading causes of death in the US, that’s terrifying.