With the progressive development of on-board technology, very often cars are equipped with driving aids. Within this article, we will try to clarify the presence of driving aids and the concrete cost of assistance.

Anyone who is a few years old will remember very well how cars were very unsafe a few decades ago. Even just the belt, it was not normal to find it in cars. In fact, seat belts were introduced when cars had already been in the production phase for several decades, not to mention ABS or airbags, which were introduced in mass production around the 1990s.

Opening a quick parenthesis, just think that the iPhone is just over 10 years old and this allows us to understand how the revolution in the world of technology has had an exponential growth. The old phones, such as the very famous Nokia 3310 and the timeless Motorola StarTac, were milestones of technology, which when compared to modern smartphones, are almost "from prehistoric times".

Getting into a middle-class car, it is currently quite common to find a whole range of driving aids. The first driving aids could be related to a few operations manageable by a control unit and sensors. But the speech now changes.

Currently, cars are very much managed by driving aids, and many aspects are entrusted to these sensors of various types. We are currently in a stage of development of technology, where driving aids are of the second level and we are about to enter the third level of driving aids.

We are talking, for example, of the automatic emergency braking, which intervenes whenever a sudden obstacle occurs in front of our car, or the car in front of us suddenly brakes. It is a very simple concept, but to be realized it must have a whole series of sensors that interface with the car, in order to intervene directly.

Another example of driving aid clearly concerns these sensors that allow the car to stay on track. If the car tends to go out of the way, the control unit intervenes and brings it back slightly inside.

Clearly there are limits to everything, and clearly technology cannot intervene by replacing man.

A question that many people ask themselves, however, is related to the cost of repairing in the workshop. Many are wondering if driving aids affect repair costs.

In fact, it would seem that replacing a damaged ultrasonic sensor, produced in case of an accident, can cost much more than one might think.

We are talking about a sensor, which we can define more concretely in a camera or a radar. According to the calculations of a prestigious US agency, repairing the damage of a low-speed accident can cost as much as $ 5,000 more, compared to the same vehicle without driving aids.

We are not simply talking about materials as such, but about a whole series of actions. As we all know, a radar, a sensor or a video camera has a certain physical cost, to which, however, we must add all the recalibration costs.

The general setting costs do not simply depend on that particular sensor, but on the whole system that interfaces with that sensor. If, for example, a simple scratch on the windshield can be seen as something negligible, the driving aid systems, on the other hand, cannot fail to work properly: their precision must be absolute.

In an emergency situation, we don't care so much if the car is slightly marked in a corner, but rather whether it can brake properly on its own. The front monitoring cameras can in fact involve a total replacement cost, much higher than the normal windshield.

If we try to think about which are the most expensive driving aid systems, we will notice that we are clearly talking about emergency braking. Secondly, we must not consider the adaptive cruise control as secondary. The difference between cruise control and adaptive cruise control is really important, and it's very big in terms of technology intervention.

In fact, if the cruise control provides for the setting of a certain speed level, which does not change independently depending on what happens in front of the car, the adaptive cruise control system is quite different.

In this case, we have a situation where the car brakes by itself, if we have a car in front of us that has a lower cruising speed than ours. So if we set 130 km per hour, but the car in front of us travels the road at 110 km / h, our car will brake by itself.

This system is really very useful, in order to reduce the number of rear-end collisions as much as possible. Clearly there are limits of intervention of the technology, but they are minimal in many situations.

A third example of driving aids, which have a high cost, are blind spot monitoring, which is particularly useful on the motorway when overtaking or even in the city in the presence of cyclists or motorcycles.

As an added bonus, we also have systems that help the car stay center of the road, which can cost as much as $ 2000. Let's not forget the 360 ° cameras, or a series of cameras that allow you to process the image of what is happening around the car, thanks to a microchip in the control unit.

The parking sensors, finally, are the simplest ones to set, but still not too cheap, as they can even go up to $ 1300.

Here is how a simple repair can be much more expensive, in the event that there is a situation of numerous driving aids inside the car. However, making an overall analysis, the benefits of driving aids are much higher than their absence. Expensive yes, but very useful indeed.

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