Paralyzed Jockey Loses Ability To Walk After Manufacturer Refuses To Fix Battery For His $100,000 Exoskeleton

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: After a horseback riding accident left him paralyzed from the waist down in 2009, former jockey Michael Straight learned to walk again with the help of a $100,000 ReWalk Personal exoskeleton. Earlier this month, that exoskeleton broke because of a malfunctioning piece of wiring in an accompanying watch that makes the exoskeleton work. The manufacturer refused to fix it, saying the machine was now too old to be serviced, and Straight once again couldn't walk anymore. 'After 371,091 steps my exoskeleton is being retired after 10 years of unbelievable physical therapy,' Straight posted on Facebook on September 16. 'The reasons [sic] why it has stopped is a pathetic excuse for a bad company to try and make more money. The reason it stopped is because of a battery in the watch I wear to operate the machine. I called thinking it was no big deal, yet I was told they stopped working on any machine that was 5 years or older. I find it very hard to believe after paying nearly $100,000 for the machine and training that a $20 battery for the watch is the reason I can't walk anymore?'

Straight's experience is a nightmare scenario that highlights what happens when companies decide to stop supporting their products and do not actively support independent repair. It's also what happens without the protection of right to repair legislation that requires manufacturers to make repair parts, guides, and tools available to the general public. Specifically, a connection wire became desoldered from the battery in a watch that connects to the exoskeleton: 'It's not the actual battery, but it's the little green connection piece we need to be the right fit and that's been our problem,' Straight posted on Facebook. Straight's personal exoskeleton was broken for two months, he said in a video on Facebook. He was eventually able to get the device fixed after attention from an article in the Paulick Report, a website about the horse industry, and a spot on local TV. 'It took me two months, and I got no results,' he said in the video. With social media and news attention, 'it only took you all four days, and look at the results,' he said earlier this week while standing in the exoskeleton. 'This is the dystopian nightmare that we've kind of entered in, where the manufacturer perspective on products is that their responsibility completely ends when it hands it over to a customer. That's not good enough for a device like this, but it's also the same thing we see up and down with every single product,' Nathan Proctor, head of citizen rights group US PIRG's right to repair project told 404 Media. 'People need to be able to fix things, there needs to be a plan in place. A $100,000 product you can only use as long as the battery lasts, that's enraging. We should not have to tolerate a society where this happens.'

'We have all this technology we release into the wild and it changes people's lives, but there's no long-term thinking. Manufacturers currently have no legal obligation to support the equipment indefinitely and there's no requirements that they publish sufficient documentation to allow others to do it,' Proctor said. 'We need to set minimum standards for documentation so that, even if a company goes bankrupt or falls off the face of the earth, a technician with sufficient knowledge can fix it.'

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