By CRM staff
Toronto, Ontario — March 26, 2019 – Autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles are increasingly making their way to Canadian roads. According to Volkswagen Group Canada collision program manager Scott Wideman, this puts more responsibility on repairers.
As of right now, many new vehicles on the road come with front view and rear-view cameras and various sensors on the bumpers. “Vehicle technology is moving at a very quick pace and changes are happening,” said Wideman. For instance, Wideman shared that Volkswagen’s 2019 Arteon will be launching in Canada in April and will be bringing autonomous features to our roads at a later date.
The autonomous features of this model will have an emergency assist feature which is meant to offer more safety for the driver. If the driver somehow becomes incapacitated for health reasons, the vehicle will pick up on that by recognizing the driver hasn’t touched the steering wheel, the accelerator or the brake pedal. The system will then tighten the driver’s seatbelt, slow down the vehicle and veer it off into the slow lane if there isn’t any traffic in the way. This feature combines adaptive cruise control, side assist, lane assist and park assist into one single system. Before it does so, it warns the driver with acoustic optical and haptic signals.
“Understanding the technology is the first step repairers should take when performing repairs on newer vehicles,” Wideman told Collision Repair. “This part of the process needs to be addressed properly. Repairers almost have to be research analysts.”
With researching the kind of technology that is within the vehicle and the option levels, repairers will need to look for the VIN coding. Wideman points out that the VIN decoding for these vehicles can be best found through OEM sites. Then, he says, the next step is to look and follow the OEM recommended repair procedures.
Wideman was the featured guest speaker on the recent Guild 21 conference call. The regular teleconference series was founded after the VeriFacts Symposium of 2013, when a group of industry representatives attended a Leadership Course at George Mason University through their MBA Program.
