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Comment by jitix | Hacker News Reader

Your car, heater, air frier, lawn mower, etc all have the potential to kill you. I’d even argue that the probability of a car killing someone due to technical malfunction or user tinkering is way higher than a farm equipment that operates in a large open area.

If all of these things were locked down following John Deere’s logic our daily lives would become very expensive and inconvenient.

We as a society have more than enough legal and insurance frameworks to mitigate any of the risks that you’ve mentioned.

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Your car, heater, air fryer, and lawn mower are consumer devices. If you modify them and they become unsafe, you're at fault.

However, farm equipment is classified as industrial equipment and if you can modify it to be unsafe without being an expert in that domain, then it is the manufacturers fault that you can do that.

Locking down industrial equipment so that it requires a trained technician to modify it is one of the ways that industrial equipment manufacturers try to mitigate the liability that they face.

> then it is the manufacturers fault that you can do that.

This is not always the case, and if it gets to the point that legislation has to be written to stop you, it's likely you don't care that much about the law in the first place.

When Marvin Heemeyer built the Killdozer, nobody blamed Komatsu for providing him the parts. Unprecedented, violent problems can happen with all sorts of equipment. We stop these accidents by holding professionals liable, not their machines.

The killdozer isn't a problem in terms of industrial liability.

Product Liability in the Farm Equipment Industry - https://youtu.be/NdN577BbnSY

I'd stress watching the section on farm equipment - https://youtu.be/NdN577BbnSY?t=1166 and then continue on to case study 1 where a farm worker was maimed and the manufacturer was held liable (see lessons learned - https://youtu.be/NdN577BbnSY?t=2561 ) ... and liability waivers to try to shift that to the farmer is at https://youtu.be/NdN577BbnSY?t=3760

The legislation and liability for industrial and agricultural equipment already exists. Under that structure, the manufacturer is the one facing the product liability claims if any claims are to be paid out.

If you (the framer) modify a JD tractor and someone gets hurt, JD is is the one likely to pay.

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