The Car Doctor Podcast Oct 19, 2025

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, what happens when they break & Lexus TX 350

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Car

Porsche 959

The Porsche 959 is a super-fast sports car that was very advanced when it was made. It's rare and special, making it a favorite among car collectors.

Term

advanced driver assistance systems

ADAS refers to technology in cars that helps drivers by providing features like automatic braking and lane-keeping. It makes driving safer and easier.

Term

OEM scan

An OEM scan is a way to check a car's electronic systems using special tools that car manufacturers use. It helps find problems in the car's electronics.

Term

OBD2 port

The OBD2 port is a plug-in point in cars that helps mechanics check for problems. It's like a computer connection for the car's electronics.

Term

right to repair

Right to repair means that car owners and repair shops can get the information and parts they need to fix vehicles. This helps people avoid being forced to go to the dealership for repairs.

Term

universal scan tool

A universal scan tool is a device that helps mechanics check and fix problems in many different types of cars. It can read error messages from the car's computer.

Term

ADAS

ADAS means Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. These are safety features in cars that help drivers, like automatic braking and lane-keeping assistance.

Term

calibration

Calibration is when you adjust a system to make sure it works properly. For cars, this means making sure the sensors and systems are set up correctly after any repairs.

Term

spec

'Spec' means the specific requirements or standards that parts of a car need to follow. For example, it includes how much air should be in the tires.

Term

self-diagnoses

Self-diagnosis means the car can check itself to see if everything is working okay. If something's wrong, it can let you know without needing a mechanic.

Term

shadow mode

Shadow mode is when a car collects information about how it drives without actually using its special features. This helps the company learn how to improve the car without any risk.

Car

Tesla

Tesla is a company that makes electric cars. They are known for their high-tech features and ability to drive themselves in certain situations.

Part

bumper

The bumper is the part of the car at the front and back that helps protect it during minor accidents. It's like a cushion for your car.

Part

windshield

The windshield is the big glass window at the front of your car. It helps you see the road and keeps you safe from wind and rain.

Term

Lane Keep Assist is a feature in some cars that helps keep the vehicle in its lane. If you start to drift out of your lane without using your turn signal, the system can gently steer the car back into the lane.

Term

LiDAR

LiDAR is a technology that helps cars see their surroundings by using lasers. It measures how long it takes for the light to bounce back, allowing the car to understand where things are around it.

Brand

Ford

Ford is a well-known car company that makes many types of vehicles, including trucks and SUVs. They are also working on new technologies to help cars drive themselves.

Brand

Genesis

Genesis is a luxury car brand that comes from Hyundai. They make high-end cars with lots of technology and comfort features.

Brand

Waymo

Waymo is a company that works on making self-driving cars. They are known for their advanced technology that allows cars to drive themselves without a human driver.

Term

self-driving cars

Self-driving cars are vehicles that can drive themselves without needing a person to control them. They use special technology to see and understand their surroundings.

Term

pre-accident condition

Pre-accident condition means how the car was before it got into an accident. When a car is repaired after an accident, the goal is to make it look and work like it did before the crash.

Term

radar

Radar is a technology that helps cars detect other objects around them. It's used in features that help keep you safe while driving, like automatic braking.

Car

Lincoln Navigator

The Lincoln Navigator is a big, fancy SUV that has a lot of space and luxury features. It's designed to be very comfortable and has lots of tech to make driving easier.

Car

Toyota Land

The Toyota Land Cruiser is a big, tough SUV that can handle rough roads and off-road adventures. People like it because it's built to last and can take you anywhere you want to go.

Car

Toyota Grand Highlander

The Toyota Grand Highlander is a bigger version of the regular Highlander, giving you more room for passengers and stuff. It's designed to be comfortable and has nice features for a better driving experience.

Car

Toyota Highlanders

The Toyota Highlander is a family-friendly SUV that has lots of room for passengers and cargo. It's comfortable to drive and comes with many safety features to keep everyone safe.

Car

Toyota Tacoma

The Toyota Tacoma is a smaller truck that's great for carrying things and going off-road. It's known for being reliable and is a good choice for people who need a tough vehicle.

Car

Toyota RAV4

The Toyota RAV4 is a small SUV that's great for everyday use. It's known for being reliable and good on gas, making it a popular choice for many people.

Car

Acura Tl

The Acura TL is a nice, comfortable car that has a sporty feel. It's known for being reliable and has a lot of features that make driving enjoyable.

LIVE

WATD presents John Paul, The Car Doctor, All Things Automotive.

Have questions?

Call or text 7-8-1-837-4900.

Now, here's John Paul, The Car Doctor.

And good Sunday morning everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Car Doctor program

on award-winning 959 WATD.

My name's John Paul, The Car Doctor here to help you with your car problems on this October 19th.

And the only reason I'm mentioning the date, it was my wife's birthday yesterday.

I should have mentioned it last week, and I didn't, so happy belated birthday to my wife Joanne.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago we had the folks from AutoShine AutoBody on to talk about the

AutoBody business, and we got into the weeds a little bit about things like so many cars today

have some form or another of advanced driver assistance systems, sort of referred to as ADAS

in its four-letter acronym.

And we talked a little bit about calibration and the technology and what you need to think about

if you're getting your car repaired these days.

And with us on the phone is Sam Perattus, Vice President of Insight and Innovation for Repairify.

Sam, good morning, and welcome to the Car Doctor program.

Good morning, thanks for having me.

And first off, tell us what Repairify is.

So Repairify, I think the industry would probably be more familiar with the brand name Aztec, that's A-S-T-E-C-H.

That's kind of how the company got started.

Repairify is kind of the larger brand that encompasses Aztec and a few acquisitions that we've made,

but the company collectively is focused on vehicle diagnostics and electronic repairs.

So we got our start in the industry as kind of the original provider of remote OEM scans.

What does that mean, right?

An OEM scan is utilizing the same diagnostic equipment that you can find in a dealership.

But what our technology allows us to do is to remotely connect those tools,

which are very expensive and only applicable to like a small variety of vehicle makes

and connect them to any car in the world provided that one of our pieces of equipment

is there to connect it to the OBD2 port.

So that was kind of the genesis of everything, was just doing diagnostics,

helping build awareness of kind of the state of these electronic systems and sensors in cars.

And then of course we got the rush of ADOS equipment and proliferation of it

and sort of business has grown a lot into calibrations and other types of electronic repairs.

And your background, you, from what I remember is you came from the industry,

you were a tech for a while and then you went to work for Aztec, right?

That's right, yeah. So I worked in a garage in Austin, Texas for a few years right out of college

and then was actually hired on Aztec originally as a technician about seven years ago.

And then from there kind of just expanded out and grew within the company

and took on responsibility for several of the technology teams.

And when it comes to getting cars repaired and, you know, living in Massachusetts

we kind of live through the right to repair laws and, you know, a lot of that

and that became sort of a bit of a fundamental start for kind of a memorandum of understanding

that vehicle manufacturers would provide information to be able to repair vehicles

including the ADOS stuff. How is it really going in reality?

In terms of like the right to repair stuff?

Yeah, yeah. Are the manufacturers allowing body shops and for that matter,

mechanical repair shops, are they able to find all the information they need these days?

I would say, yes, it's definitely working.

I mean the only reason we're able to do what we do as a business is because of right to repair laws.

If right to repair laws weren't a thing there wouldn't be common diagnostic port standards

and other communication protocol standards that we can leverage to do this

and probably the OEMs wouldn't even allow us to buy their tools.

They would prefer if everything just got directed into dealerships.

So the right to repair legislation is definitely enabling the industry to do more than it would have

if it didn't exist. All that said, there's still some problems, I think,

with everything being fulfilled to the spirit of the legislation.

So it's still difficult to access some of these things.

What the legislation does I think is make it possible, right? It doesn't make it easy.

You sort of mentioned it early on, but I remember part of this legislation I spent,

and I'm not a political person at all, but I spent time at the state house testifying and all this,

and there was going to be kind of a universal scan tool that was going to work on every single vehicle

from whatever the alphabet, from one end of the spectrum to the other.

And I don't know that I actually saw that, but you're able to do it remotely now, right?

Right, yeah. So as far as I understand it, I think the piece of legislation you're referring to

is basically the one that was kind of defining what OBD-3 would look like, right?

So for listeners that don't know what OBD is, it's a standard diagnostic port that you use to connect a scan tool to.

It's what the Emissions Shack uses to pull emissions data.

What do you get vehicle inspections done?

So there was that piece of Massachusetts legislation that basically said,

hey, we're going to move to a new wireless standard, right?

It'll still be a standard communication interface that everybody can use,

but it was kind of mandating the creation of a board to go figure all this out,

and of course that immediately got stopped up in the courts.

So as far as I know, that's still the plan.

I think just like with a lot of things in our industry, it's going to move along pretty slowly and evolve over time.

I still think OBD-2 ports are going to be around for a while just for the convenience of having a common physical connector.

But yes, so while we wait for that to happen, which could take a decade still,

we're stuck with OBD-2 and we are able to do a lot now with that.

It's a very old interface. I think it was first introduced in 1996,

but kind of taking that old interface that's just a 16-pin connector

and coupling it with our technology, which allows it to basically be a connected device online,

is what enables us to kind of build that remote interface with the vehicle

and get some of the benefits that you get with like a modern telematics interface,

but in a vehicle that predates those or for a user that doesn't have access to them.

The other big kind of topic with right to repair right now is,

how do repairs in the aftermarket get access to telematic interfaces

and these other things that are currently kind of proprietary to the OS?

Yeah, it really shows the complexity of what happens.

People think sometimes body shops, they just replace doors and fenders

and paint and prep and go on with that.

What should, if somebody got in a fairly significant crash with their car,

what kind of questions should they be asking the body shop folks

when it comes to some of these sensors that are in their vehicle?

I guess both the body shop folks and the insurance adjuster

who's kind of writing the check for it.

What should people be thinking about?

I think it's a lot of things for people who don't have expertise

in vehicle repair, just monitoring the situation.

I wouldn't recommend necessarily trying to make your own determinations

about what needs to be done to the car,

because it can get pretty complicated and nuanced what the requirements are

and a lot of them aren't even readily available on the public internet.

You have to have access to an OEM repair library

and kind of trace citations through three different documents.

The thing I think I'd recommend to vehicle owners who are having their vehicles repaired

is just make sure that the shop even has an awareness that your car has ADAS on it

and that these things need to be checked.

It's got a lot better over the last five years or so,

but I still have moments where I'm kind of alarmed that

vehicle repair facilities are just kind of ignoring ADAS entirely

and doing things like taking bumpers off and putting them back on.

So I think the easiest question to ask is what ADAS equipment is on my vehicle

and can you show me that you've found the relevant documentation outlining

when it needs to be calibrated and then if it does need to be calibrated,

how it should be calibrated, what are all those kind of prerequisites

for ensuring that the calibration is done properly.

That's things like making sure the tires are inflated to spec,

making sure the fuel tank has the right amount of fuel in it.

It can get pretty detailed.

But you just like a body shop that's really kind of got it together

will usually be able to provide you a packet of documentation on this

because the insurance company is typically asking them the same questions

when they're seeking reimbursement for performing these procedures.

Good to know.

And most of the calibration now is, I guess for one of a better word,

static calibration where the technician sets up targets

and makes the whole system work.

Do you see a time where, and maybe it's already there

and I'm just not aware of it, that cars will be able to self-calibrate themselves?

Yeah, it's a super interesting debate.

So we know this is a possibility because a lot of cars already do it.

So Tesla is kind of at the extreme end of the spectrum

in a lot of ways regarding vehicles.

But particularly with calibrations, they have some of the most sophisticated setups

in their camera systems.

But there's no static calibration procedures to calibrate them.

You just simply drive the car.

It self-diagnoses when the cameras are not working.

Basically shuts the 8-offs off and then it'll tell you

just keep driving and when it's collected enough information,

it'll re-enable the systems.

So we already have cars that are essentially full self-calibrating

without having to have any kind of diagnostic interface whatsoever.

Then kind of a step down from that, what the current evolution is

for warrior main three manufacturers is what we call a dynamic calibration.

So dynamic calibration is actually pretty similar to a self-calibration

that's requiring that a diagnostic tool be connected to the vehicle,

which is going to give the driver some prompts and things about

what it wants to see specifically.

I want to see some road signs.

I want to see the lane markers, and it'll kind of guide you

through performing a drive cycle to give it all the information

that it needs to build a calibration profile.

And those occasionally have things like you have to go get a bubble level

and tighten some screws on the sensor to make sure it's generally

in spec, but it's not nearly the level of precision

and process that comes along with performing a static calibration

where you actually have to place targets with millimeter level accuracy.

Yeah, and I remember some years back Tesla getting a little bit of trouble

because they, and I think the term was they were putting their cars out

in shadow mode, so it was sort of they were doing exactly what you described.

There was sort of self-calibrating as the vehicle was driven,

not letting the owners know that that stuff was going on kind of in the background

and the cars, the car owners were being used sort of as tests for their technology.

Yeah, as I understand it, and I've never bought one,

like this is how they roll off the factory floor.

Like I've heard this account from people that have purchased Tesla's

with zero miles on them, like they come off the assembly line,

not calibrated, right?

And then like the first 200 miles of you owning it,

is it reading everything in and then building a calibration profile

and then it's off to the races.

So what's interesting about it is like, yeah,

it's very different than what all the other OEMs do,

but like the thing that you do after repair is exactly the same thing

that you do immediately following the original assembly of the vehicle.

So in that way, it very much is an OEM way of doing it.

Yeah, and you know, we think about advanced driver system systems

as lane centering and blind spot monitoring,

but it can be as simple as a windshield replacement, right?

Oh, for sure.

Yeah, I think that's probably the most common one that we're seeing get disturbed

because it's not that often that you have your bumpers off, right?

Like if you've been in an accident, a front or rear end collision,

obviously that's going to be involved.

But you know, over the course of owning a vehicle,

most people are not getting their bumpers off,

but having your windshield changed because it's got a rock chip in it

or something like that is far more common.

And essentially like this is the easiest one out of all the 8S equipment.

If you've got a windshield camera and you're changing the windshield,

you're going to have to do a calibration and it does very much matter.

You know, these small changes in kind of the lensing of the glass

in front of the camera and just the general resolution of the information

that the camera is capturing is very sensitive.

So I've never seen an instance where a vehicle has a windshield camera

and has a windscreen placement performed and doesn't need a calibration

except for Tesla.

And really, Tesla does need a calibration, right?

It's just you do it yourself.

Yeah.

You know, at good point, what happens if, you know,

you have a relatively new car that gets in a crash

and you know, the scans and the calibrations weren't performed?

Are you going to get check engine lights?

Are you going to get dash warnings or is just stuff not going to work?

So it depends a lot on like which system it is, right?

Nature of the accident, every collision is kind of a, you know,

unique damage event.

So I would say generally speaking, right, what's going to happen

if you've got kind of a normal circumstance

and you and the shop didn't do diagnostics on the 8S equipment

and they didn't do then the calibrations that were required

as a result of diagnosing them and figuring out what it needed to be done.

Probably what's going to happen first in most circumstances

is they'll fix all the collision repairs

and then take it out for a test drive

and whoever takes it out for a test drive will notice

that something's not working properly, right?

Like Lane keep will keep trying to pull you out of the lane

or you'll be getting alerts for things that aren't there

in your blind spot or automatic emergency braking

and they'll drive it right back to the shop

and then they'll go look up why this is happening

and figure out that they need to do calibrations and do them.

So a lot of it gets caught, you know, at the end

and kind of the QA process before it gets back to the customer

but this is still a significant inconvenience for everyone

because now the shop has to file a supplement to the insurance company.

They have to delay delivery of the vehicle to the owner

which isn't a good experience.

So that's probably most common.

Second most common is it gets through that process

and gets into the hand of the consumer

and then they have the same experience.

Either, you know, dash light comes on

or one of these systems is behaving abnormally

and then they take it back to the shop and complain about it

and we go through the same process.

The one that I think is, you know,

there's a lot of systems in place that are designed

to make sure that these features fail safe

and kind of self-diagnose and don't create unsafe situations

but it is still very much possible

and that's, you know, the main reason that we feel strongly

everybody needs to be ahead of the curve

on these calibration procedures,

not waiting until something goes wrong

is because we do think it's certainly possible

that, you know, light keeps not functioning correctly

and it, you know, sees something weird

and causes you to appear in oncoming traffic

and, you know, it results in a second collision.

So that's worst case scenario.

There's a lot of things that, you know,

are trying to prevent that from happening

but it's definitely on the table.

Yeah, and, you know, it was probably

no more than five years ago.

There wasn't a single car sold in the United States

that I know of that had LiDAR

as part of its advanced driver system.

Yeah.

Now with, you know, things like the GM BlueCruise

or whatever they call it

and Ford Systems and Genesis, I think, as well.

We're starting to see LiDAR being incorporated.

So even more critical to make sure all these calibrations

are done correctly, right?

Yeah, for sure. LiDAR is incredibly sensitive, right?

Like for the same reason that it enables such advanced functionality.

It's also very, very subject to disturbance.

But it'll be interesting to see how that one develops

because I think actually most of the, like, Ford and GM systems

I think are not using significant degrees of LiDAR.

Like if you've seen Waymo's or, you know, other, like, autonomous vehicles

on the road, the little bini sensors on them, right?

Those are kind of the industrial-grade LiDAR.

They're super expensive, right?

Right.

I have questions about kind of the staying power of them

just because if you bump one of those sensors in a collision,

you're like, the calibration's expensive,

but like replacing the sensor,

which kind of has to be sitting behind the bumper spinning somewhere.

You mean the thing that looks like a...

Or the thing that looks like a radar tower on the roof of the car?

You know, not the most aesthetically pleasing thing in the world.

And then, you know, 15 years ago, by now, you know,

the planet was going to be occupied, and you mentioned Waymo,

planet's going to be occupied by self-driving cars

that seems to have slowed down just a little bit.

Although I think just recently in Vegas or something,

they reintroduced their self-driving fleet.

But, you know, this idea of ADAS calibration

will even become that much more critical

when vehicles drive themselves, right?

Definitely, yeah.

I mean, that's kind of where all this is working towards.

I think the goal of all of these systems

is to obviously assist the driver at this stage,

but, you know, I think what consumers and manufacturers,

both want is for them to continue to evolve

into fully autonomous self-driving vehicles.

And obviously at that point, right, there is no safety net, right?

The guy doing the test drive after the collision repair,

who's going to see the warning light come on

or, you know, feel that it's pulling into another lane

and then correct it isn't there to do that.

So, you know, we have to be certain

that everything's very buttoned up

when it comes to monitoring the health of these systems.

So, how can your company repairify,

help body shops and general repair shops?

I mean, let's face it, like you said,

you might have to take a bumper off

to get to an airbag sensor

and now you want to make sure you put it back where it belongs

so everything's going to work the way it should.

How can your company help with technology

and equipment to make sure everything's put back together

the way it's supposed to be?

Yeah, so this is a very, like, pervasive problem

what you're stating and we have one product

that's really just specifically focused on solving it.

It's called ADOS Think.

It was kind of the first product

in what I would call, like, the estimate scrubbing space.

So, what it does is it integrates with

Estimatic softwares, right,

which is where estimators in a body shop will go in

and they'll look at the vehicle

and basically do a visual and other assessment

to figure out what all needs to be done to it, right?

Am I going to replace the front bumper?

Am I going to paint the rear bumper?

Do I need to change the glass?

And so they write up an estimated line-by-line

with each labor and part operation

that needs to be done

in order to return the vehicle to pre-accident condition

and the real purpose of it is to be a quote, right?

It's what they deliver to the insurance company

initially to determine if the vehicle

is going to be a total loss or not,

but when they do that,

they give us a pretty good level of detail

on the nature of the repairs that they're performing,

which really contains most of the criteria necessary

to determine if a calibration is required.

Because I think common misconception, right,

like these sensors, they don't do a good job

of raising their hand and saying,

hey, you took the bumper off,

you need to calibrate me.

Doing a scan on them isn't frequently going to tell you

whether or not a calibration is necessary

because there's no sensor to determine

if the bumper's on or off of the car, right?

But the reason that the bumper is kind of the critical component

is because either the radar's attached to it, right?

And so it's getting repositioned when you remove

and reinstall the bumper,

or in the case of body repair,

you put on an aftermarket bumper

that has a different plastic thickness

slightly that can change the lensing of the radar waves

that are coming through it

and give it a different perception

of kind of where it sits relative to the vehicle.

So anyhow, this estimate contains all these lines.

What ADAS think does is it reads through all of those lines,

looks for things like remove and reinstall the windshield,

remove and reinstall the bumper,

and then it compares them to the manufacturer

position statements and repair procedures

that are kind of the standard

for when this stuff needs to be done.

And within seconds, after completing your estimate,

it returns you an ADAS calibration report

that lists out every sensor that's been solved on the vehicle.

And then what the procedure is

that kind of documents when it's required,

the procedure that documents how to do it properly,

and then if those criteria have been met

and the calibration is required or not.

And then, of course, we provide some detail

around what equipment you need to use,

just other kind of logistical assistance to the shop.

So this is another thing to kind of go back

to your earlier question, right,

that consumers can ask for is to see kind of the

ADAS calibration report.

It's kind of like asking for an alignment report.

Yeah, no, it absolutely makes sense.

And for people who want more information,

garage owners want more information,

Repairify.com is a good way.

And I just clicked on the site

and something I'm a little bit more familiar with,

one of your sub-brands is BlueDriver,

an OBD-2 scan-to-dongle that syncs up to your phone.

And it's a tool that I actually keep in my car all the time,

just in case I'm on a road trip or something

and a check engine light comes on,

I can plug it in, click on it,

and see if it's something I need to worry about.

Yep, yeah, it's a great tool.

I have one in my glove box as well.

That's our consumer grade product.

What's really cool about it is kind of,

because it lives under the same umbrella as Aztec

and the more professional grade diagnostics,

we have a lot of the intelligence around

kind of how to interpret the diagnostic information

that you get back that we use for the professional market

and capture the professional market,

powering the capabilities of that BlueDriver app.

Well, Sam, I want to thank you for taking some time

out of your Sunday morning and joining us

on the CarDoctor radio program.

I know I learned a lot about calibration of ADAS

and how important it is and why it's necessary

when repairs are needed.

So I want to, again, thank you for taking a little time

out of your Sunday.

Yeah, happy to do it.

Thanks so much for having me.

All right, thanks, Sam. Take care.

That was Sam Paradas.

She is the Vice President of Innovation for Repairify.

And my name's John Paul,

and we need to take a break.

Pay some bills.

You're listening to the CarDoctor program

on 959WATD.

When we come back,

we'll talk about the luxury family cruiser

that have been driving around in this week.

You're listening to the CarDoctor program on 959WATD.

We'll be right back.

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About this episode

Exploring the complexities of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), this episode features Sam Perattus from Repairify, who discusses the importance of proper calibration and diagnostics in modern vehicles. Listeners learn about the challenges posed by right-to-repair laws and how they impact vehicle maintenance. The conversation also touches on the new Lexus TX 350, a luxury family SUV that combines comfort and technology, highlighting its performance and features. This episode is packed with insights on vehicle repairs and the evolving landscape of automotive technology.

ADAS advanced driver assistance systems bumper calibration Ford Genesis lane keep assist LiDAR OBD2 port OEM scan

Acura TL Lincoln Navigator Porsche 959 Toyota Grand Highlander Toyota Highlander Toyota Land Cruiser Toyota RAV4 Toyota Tacoma

Original notes

In this episode we talk with Sam Poradish - Vice President of Insights & Innovation, Repairify. ADAS is a great help with driver safety and necessary for autonomous vehicles but how do you fix it when it breaks? We also review the Lexus TX 350 AWD and talk with producer Jesse Wilkins about his podcast and live event Hometown Ghost Storys www.hometownghoststories.com

The Car Doctor Podcast

John Paul

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