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this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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By your logic, the software bug in my Honda’s ECU would be called a recall because it required me going to a dealership and having them perform the software update. An owner can’t simply download and install ECU updates themselves in the vast majority of cases.
But then by your same logic the software update that Toyota mailed to me on a USB stick for my Prius shouldn’t be called a recall because I was able to plug the USB stick into the car myself. The only reason Toyota mailed that USB stick to me and thousands of other Prius owners is because they were legally required to fix a software bug identified by NHTSA in a recall notice. Toyota decided the USB approach was better than having all of us drive to dealers to have them apply it.
And the various over-the-air software updates that Tesla, Rivian, and others shouldn’t be called recalls either by your same logic.
Why cause confusion over calling software updates different things based solely on who installs it and/or how it’s installed? In all these cases NHTSA received reports about a safety issue, opened a formal investigation, and ultimately issued a legally binding directive to the manufacturer that required them, by law, to address it. That legally binding directive is a recall notice, and it can apply to software that you have to visit a dealer to install, or to software the owner can install, or to software the manufacturer can install automatically.
That entire process is what makes something a recall. Not how it’s addressed in the end.
Because they're different things? For the user it doesn't matter if they're both same legally, in one case they need to bring their car somewhere, in the other one they don't. If anything it's confusing to call them both a recall.
But they are NOT different things. In every one of these examples:
The only thing that is different in this entire process is how the remedy is applied. Every single step other than that is identical.
And that's the thing that matters to the person who owns the car. Currently when a user sees that word they don't know what they need to do to fix it. You can have some other name encompassing both (like 'critical fix'), but if you keep recall for when that fix isn't user applicable, (and furthermore have specific names for the fixes themselves if they're user applicable) people would immediately understand
Lots of people here are disagreeing with me but I'm yet to see an argument about why that shouldn't be the case other than that it currently isn't. But even that's an argument for why changing the term would be difficult, not for why calling every fix 'recall' makes sense.