As many comments on these stories demonstrate, farmers have as much valid reasons to have control over their equipment as John Deere has for preventing it.
Technology is always about trade-offs. It's just that John Deere took things too far.
As much as I dislike John Deer's strategy, your statement is just stupid. Waiting for people do die before you regulate to make it safer doesn't work. Look at Ford who calculated that saving $x on a component was worth it if only y people die and their relatives sue.
Having control over your tractor does not necessarily kill people. Death is not inherently implied by farmers merely having access.
Apples and oranges. Equating the two is silly.
Most people won't be adding in gotos and if statements, they'll be replacing borken parts and getting their tractors working again.
Those few who actually do end up writing code for it, and those who opt to run it, will do so with the full knowledge that it'll be their asses on the line when something goes wrong.
Either way, my point was that people won't die from access unless they do something really stupid, and death due to stupidity is going to occur regardless of whether the tractor is locked down or not.
In a world where extremely dangerous phone chargers are getting bought just because they are cheap, I cannot imagine that your views are correct. People are putting active fire hazards into their homes and other people are building them in full knowledge that the components used are inadequate.
Yes, people should be able to repair their machines and change single components but it should be guaranteed that basic safety functionality is working. I'm not talking about something where a farmer personally modifies their own machine. I'm talking about manufacturers that build cheap replacement parts.
Source: The aerospace industry
A related question I want to ask is: what is inherent about software that makes it not okay to have restrictions on modifications where lives other than the owner's may be at stake? I see other comments here that say things like "oh these machines should have mechanical limiters etc. that prevent them from being dangerous." But isn't that essentially the same thing, just implemented in hardware and not software?
I'd like to note that I'm not saying that John Deere is in the right here. I just feel that the argument in the parent comment is, for lack of a better word, inhumane.
If people thought like you did, we wouldn't have kitchen knifes.