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Active Safety Features Complicate Vehicle Repair, Says IIHS

While active safety features like crash avoidance help prevent accidents, they can make repairs trickier and lengthier if they get damaged, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety or IIHS reports. Crash prevention technology also frequently makes repairs more expensive according to IIHS studies.

Crash avoidance and other active safety features cut down on accidents, with the IIHS citing the example of rear-end crashes cut by 50 percent in police reports after introducing automatic emergency braking or AEB. Therefore, costly repairs are much less likely with active safety features in operation.

Interior of a Cadillac Escalade with the driver using the Enhanced Super Cruise safety features.

The systems themselves typically aren’t damaged even if an accident does occur. In those instances where the active safety system needs to be repaired, however, it can be difficult to correctly recalibrate, potentially resulting in multiple trips to the service center or mechanic.

Alexandra Mueller, the Senior Research Scientist for IIHS who designed the study, noted that in the small percentage of cases where active safety technology needed repairs, vehicle owners “had issues with the technology afterward, and some said they had to have the same feature repaired more than once.”

A Lidar map image of Super Cruise.

Mueller added that owner satisfaction with the systems remained high despite the extra cost and hassle of additional repairs. However, the need to recalibrate the active safety systems can send the price of even fairly ordinary repairs skyrocketing. The cost of replacing a windshield can jump from $250 to $1,000 if front crash prevention is present, the Highway Loss Data Institute or HLDI reports.

The number of active safety features equipped as standard on vehicles is increasing sharply. This makes it more likely systems that are costly to repair will be damaged in collisions in the future, though those accidents themselves should be much rarer.

The IIHS previously published a study pointing out automatic emergency braking or AEB cuts the number of overall crashes by 43 percent, rear-end collisions by 42 percent, and serious or fatal injuries by a whopping 77 percent. Unfortunately, the same study showed AEB is least likely to be equipped on pickup trucks, the most common vehicle type on the road.

While active safety features like AEB greatly reduce crashes and make those that occur less likely to seriously injure or kill someone, the IIHS also warns owners tend to dangerously overestimate what semi-autonomous driver assist systems can do. GM Super Cruise is a prime example, with owners tending to treat the equipped vehicles as fully autonomous self-driving robots and not vehicles still in need of constant human attention and input.

53 percent of GM Super Cruise users told IIHS they treated their vehicle as fully self-driving, meaning they potentially took their hands off the wheel for extended periods or stopped paying attention to the road.

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Comments

  1. Most of it is a scam. The auto repair industry has to CYA and show record of “calibrations” being done. Most of the time this is subleted to
    Vendors who charge hundreds of dollars per operation.

    Honda is by far the worst. A typical “since you’re mixing paint fix my bumper” repair is about 1000-1200 dollars for typical repair and refinish. The resulting calibrations double that bill. I regularly hand insurance companies 1200-1500 dollar bills for ADAS “calibration”.

    You remove the bumper, you need a thousand dollars in calibrations even though the sensor wasn’t hit or moved. Or you can sue. It’s a slippery slope.

    Auto insurance rates will hit new heights in the coming years. It’s absolutely absurd.

    Most of the time, no calibration actually takes place just a code clear and maybe a test drive by the vendor.

    The equipment to “talk” to the systems for programming (each OEM is different, long gone is the days of right to repair) is tens of thousands plus the static targets and physical equipment jigs if a sensor is replaced for thousands more.

    Reply
    1. The money spent making safer cars should be substituted making safer drivers ! Double the fines – suspend licences – make defensive driving classes a once a year 1 hr program and showing videos of the tragedy’s of the road ! Lower speed limits ! Its a no brainer

      Reply
      1. Really, you just need to punish the people that cause the problems, but like with everything else in our society, we’re not ever going to do that.

        Reply
  2. Cars cost almost 100K and have more computers on them than the Apollo Lunar Module and you can’t even change your own headlights without a computer tech and a bodyshop tech which in today’s world will soon be one in the same.

    Reply
    1. Wait til they start mailing tickets to people because the computers onboard the vehicle auto-connects with the police in the city/town you are driving thru.

      Reply
  3. Personal Car Ownership is trending to obsolesce. When the cost to fuel/recharge/repairs/depreciation/interest exceed 25-40% of many household incomes, it just reaches a tipping point. And it’s only getting worse, just the way they want it. Sorry if that’s not what you like to hear, but that’s just the way it’s heading.

    Reply
  4. The features just add cost and generally do not prevent near as much as they think they do. In many cases these crashes happen do to people being inattentive and even stoned or drunk most of them.

    Most of the crashes in this are are under the influence. It is so bad they are finding people passed out stoned in the middle of the road with the car running at times.

    What next add a auto NACAN dispenser per car?

    Just wait till the breath analyzers that are now mandated come.

    My auto braking in my vehicles have more false actions than anything. They like shadows and slam the brakes on.

    Reply
    1. And these features in many ways makes the cars less safe. Every time I get a Camry for a rental, I have to turn off the active safety features. I swing wide for a wide load, the lake keep assist pulls me back into a double wide, I’m in rush hour traffic, a guy swerved in front of me, and auto braking slams down almost causing the guy behind me to turn me into a pancake. Toyota has almost killed me twice.

      Reply
    2. I had a Honda Idiocy van that liked to do that. A LOT. On the freeway for no real cause. None of my MoPars or GMs, or my present Subaru, have done any such thing.

      Reply
  5. Just today, forward collision avoidance saved the day. Driving my 2021 Ram and a bit too busy looking and touching the big 12″ screen, I get a warning tone and braking started before I could get the foot on the brake pedal. When I applied full braking and stopped, I was more than a car length away. The system can be deactivated. My brother Ram did an emergency brake caused by a bush next to the curb. He deactivated the feature. I think you’ll still get a warning tone, just the brakes will not be applied.

    Reply
  6. “ Active Safety Features Complicate Vehicle Repair, Says IIHS”

    No 💩 Shirlock.

    File that under “duh”.

    Reply

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