Right now, thousands of cars are driving with unreliable ADAS sensors that may not warn drivers of potential disaster. If that doesn’t sound serious enough, your shop could be to blame – morally and legally.

According to Thatcham’s Insurance Industry Requirements, the liability for ADAS faults falls to the repairer, who could be in for costly legal battles when accidents occur. ADAS was meant to save lives, but when systems are improperly calibrated, crucial safety features like collision or lane departure warnings could malfunction. 

There’s little margin for error in high-speed traffic, and the same is true for ADAS calibration. Even the slightest modification, like a tire change, could make driver-assist and crash-avoidance technology not work properly, or at all.

The problem is not only severe – it’s also accelerating. Fast.

ADAS in vehicles is flooding the market. 65% of the repairs in North America now need at least one ADAS recalibration, up from 17% in 2023. The newer the model, the more the calibration, with more than four times the calibrations for 2023 model year vehicles versus 2014, according to CCC Intelligent Solutions. And with the ADAS market estimated to increase by $25.67bn to 2027, this road is only headed in one direction.

But it’s not just the number of vehicles with ADAS you need to worry about. For every vehicle, there are now simply too many ADAS variations for the human brain to compute: over 500,000 unique potential ADAS procedure combinations based on variables like make, model, trim, package, and model year, multiplied by thousands of original equipment manufacturer-mandated repair procedures for each make and model.

Endless permutations, endlessly multiplying.

ADAS is still a relatively new technology that, at the moment, has been largely untouched by regulation. When the implementation of new technology accelerates at the speed that ADAS has – especially in a traditionally-minded industry like repairs – most shops naturally lag behind in their ability to adapt to it, and it shows in the numbers. They’re not performing all the ADAS calibrations they should be, and when they do, they’re not performing them correctly a lot of the time. A 2023 survey of more than 3000 vehicle owners found that half who had a repair that involved ADAS applications had issues with the system even after the job was complete.

The blame shouldn’t lie on shops. No human brain can keep up with the ever-changing, ever-growing number of ADAS calibrations coming to market, and these shops have been horribly unequipped with the tech and training to help them get up to speed. A recent article in FenderBender found that the majority of surveyed technicians were unhappy with how they were trained to meet ADAS requirements. Layer on the lack of regulations, and it’s no wonder repair shops have no clue if they’re identifying the right calibrations, performing them correctly, in the correct environment, and whether their calibrations meet the standard set by OEMs. 

The reality is, ADAS isn’t going away anytime soon. OEMs will always add more sensors to each new model that comes off the line. For repair shops, this shouldn’t be a point of frustration – it should be seen as an opportunity. If you’re proactive in implementing workflows around identifying and performing ADAS calibrations, it’s a sure-fire way of protecting against liability, booking more revenue, and future-proofing your shop against the changes you know will happen. This means finding new tools and software that can help you more effectively tackle a larger scale of ADAS repairs – ideally tools that plugin into your existing workflow –  establishing SOPs and rolling them out across your shops, and investing the time to educate both your technicians and your customers on the necessity of doing ADAS calibrations and doing them right.

Start future-proofing your shop with Revv. 

To help you keep up with all of the ever-evolving ADAS variables, we aggregate up-to-date documentation from all the latest major car databases and manufacturer guidelines, identify which ADAS calibrations need to be done from your repair estimates, and share all the relevant calibration instructions – all while integrating with estimating softwares like CCC ONE. 

With Revv you’re getting the most accurate and comprehensive calibration reports on the market, so you can stay prepared for the ADAS growth around the corner. Start your free trial today.