Why ADAS Information May Seem Hard to Find

Posted on 15 May 2018 Print

With advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) introduction into high volume vehicles, it has forced the collision industry to move into an area of electronics that traditionally was reserved for mechanical technicians. So, how do mechanical technicians use this service information every day?

The first thing you need to understand is that mechanical technicians have a very different job than a collision repair technician. When a collision technician or an estimator approaches a vehicle, they are looking at the entire vehicle for damage and what systems may have been affect during the collision. A mechanical technician approaches a vehicle that has one single issue, perhaps with multiple symptoms, but typically there is a single fault causing all the symptoms.

How a mechanical technician approaches a vehicle is how a service manual approaches a vehicle, with a single fault. Most service manuals have flowcharts that take the mechanical technician through a step-by-step procedure of checks and various tests to diagnose the true problem in the system and all the steps necessary to complete the repair, including calibrations.

If an issue is caused by a broken wire, a bad ground, a blown fuse, or a damaged control module the flowchart will lead you to the cause of the issue. The problem on the collision repair side of things is that the vehicle may have all of these issues listed above happening at the same time as a result of the collision. In order to find all the information to properly repair a vehicle this service information is critical, which is why I-CAR created the OEM Calibration Requirements Search to make identifying and finding this repair information easier for the collision repair industry.

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