Really? Can you point me to the California statute that outlaws mere mortals owning or using an OBD II scanner or that you have to pay a mechanic to use their OBD II scanner?
Is PepBoys, Autozone or O'Reilly's dealing in contraband by selling these scanners?
I think you can OWN an OBD . If you are a business you can’t lend it. I can’t point you to the statue but I have experienced the problem first hand. The extreme example I can relate happened in Laughlin Nevada.It’s on the border with California. On the California side the Auto Zone could not lend me their OBD. So I drove to an Auto zone on the Nevada side where I was able to borrow it and then fix the problem myself. Try getting rid of used Anti-freeze in most states. That sucks too. I wonder how many people have dumped the stuff illegally because it is so difficult to do so legally.