April 20, 2018—Research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) early last year found that a misaligned Honda Civic camera led to issues with the vehicle’s lane-departure warning and auto braking systems.
Sean O’Malley, senior test coordinator for IIHS (who spoke with FenderBender on this topic in a recent CollisionCast episode), has worked on windshield-mounted advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) research for about three years. His research focuses on dealerships and their calibration work and how the work performs in a crash-test.
The research was conducted among dealerships in the Virgina area, he said.
Recently, O’Malley was driving a 2016 Honda Civic used in his IIHS crash tests and noticed the lane-departure warning go off when he appeared to be in the center of the lane.
While O’Malley only found the Honda Civic camera to be misaligned by 0.4 degrees on the left and by 0.6 degrees on the right, he said misalignments in ADAS technology mean the industry needs a closer look at calibrations.
He said this misalignment could be caused from a misalignment at the factory or shop level and should not result in a ban of aftermarket parts.
ADAS technology in cars typically means the vehicle is equipped with radar behind the front grille and a dashboard camera, O’Malley said.
“Whatever technology they install in the car, that camera needs to be told where the center of the car is,” he said.
When testing 12 other aftermarket and OEM windshields, O’Malley said he never had encountered a problem like this Honda Civic camera.
