Fender benders mean serious high-tech repairs now

By Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNN

(CNN) — Auto body repair was a pretty straightforward business not that long ago. When metal got bent in a crash, someone needed to unbend it. It was a craft.

These days, it’s high-tech. Virtually every new vehicle sold in the last few years has sensors and cameras, including radar and sonar, throughout the body of the vehicle.

Those sensors dot the body of a car like little round buttons. Sometimes shiny black boxes are also embedded in the grille and what look like camera lenses are mounted behind the windshield up high near the rearview mirror.

These have made the repair process more complex because, unlike a smashed fender, a sensor or camera can’t just be bolted or welded back on. To work, they need to be carefully and precisely aligned. It’s changed the process of collision repair a lot.

“The change that we’ve seen in the last five years is greater than we’ve seen, probably, in the last five decades,” said Todd Dillender, chief operating officer of Caliber Collision, one of the biggest auto body repair companies in the United States with more than 1,700 locations across 41 states.

According to a study by the consumer automotive group AAA, fixing sensors and cameras now accounts for more than a third of the post-crash repair costs in a new vehicle.

It’s important to note that no one, including AAA, recommends not getting these features because of repair costs. Systems like automatic emergency braking, blind spot monitoring, and rear cross-traffic alerts can reduce your chances of getting in a crash in the first place. That’s one reason automatic emergency braking is now nearly universal on new cars and, in a few years, will be required in the United States.

Besides avoiding the need for repairs by reducing crashes, they also help prevent injury to vehicle occupants and pedestrians which is, after all, far more important than a dented fender.

Some of these systems can cut crash rates in half, said Greg Brannon, director of automotive engineering at AAA.

“They’re not going to prevent everything,” said Brannon, “And when you are in a crash, there are additional costs so it’s sort of the old ‘there’s no free ride’ when it comes to these things.”

These sensors and cameras can interact with a vehicle’s brakes and, sometimes, steering so that, in an emergency, the car will stop or swerve back into its lane. Most commonly, they set off warning tones, lights and graphics on the vehicle’s internal screens to warn a driver of a car, pedestrian or object that presents a potential hazard.

In a crash, these sensors and cameras can be damaged or just knocked out of alignment. In either case the sensor will be useless or can cause systems to behave erratically.

“You’re changing the way the sensor looks out in the world,” said Hami Ebrahimi, chief commercial officer at Caliber.

Even a tiny misalignment can result in a big difference in where another vehicle or obstacle is perceived to be.

Every car is different

While these sensors and cameras may need to be aligned and recalibrated following any collision, what makes the task harder is that every car manufacturer can have a different process for making the repair. Even different models can have different methods and can require different equipment.

“Even within the same manufacturer, sometimes even the same model, the recalibration procedures are different depending on the systems in the car and what type of system that specific vehicle has,” Ebrahimi said.

Some vehicles require “dynamic calibration,” which means, once the sensors and cameras are back in place, a driver needs to take the vehicle out on real roads for testing. With proper equipment attached the car can, essentially, recalibrate itself as it watches lane lines and other markers. It requires the car to be driven for a set distance at a certain speed but weather and traffic can create problems.

“If you’re in Chicago or L.A., good luck getting to that speed,” said Ebrahimi ”or if you’re in Seattle or Chicago or New York, with snow, good luck picking up all the road markings.”

More commonly, vehicles need “static calibration,” which can be done using machinery inside a closed workshop with a flat, level floor. Special targets are set up around the vehicle at set distances according to instructions from the vehicle manufacturer.

“The car [views] those targets at those specific distances to recalibrate the world into the car’s computer,” Ebrahimi said.

Not just the cost of materials

These kinds of repairs also demand buildings with open space that meet requirements including specific colors and lighting. And it requires special training for employees to perform these sorts of recalibrations, he said.

With a rapidly changing industry, qualified auto body repair technicians are in short supply, just as they are in the engine repair business. That’s also led to upward pressure on pay in the industry as technicians have to be highly qualified and educated, Dillender said. That’s good for people who work in the industry, of course, but tougher for those who pay, and for the insurance companies who, in turn, pay for the repairs.

Even within the insurance industry itself, the job of a claims adjuster has gotten much more complicated, said Mike Bundra, director of Allstate’s auto repair network.

“We’ve invested heavily into training and development, more than we ever have,” he said.

Claim adjustors, who often come from the collision repair industry themselves, need to understand all the nuances involved in repairing these automated systems and sensors.

“Those annual trainings are more quarterly and ‘as needed,’ really, right now,” said Bundra.

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