This winter has started off with a couple of cold snaps and snowstorms. Local authorities have been on the ball with pretreatment of the roads and plowing. But winter weather can cause havoc with the “Advanced Driver Assistant Systems” (ADAS).
My wife and I were traveling along I-70 and it started to change from rain to freezing rain. Suddenly a message came up saying “lane assistance system” deactivated! The next day, traveling to BWI on I95, the car started to shimmy and wobble, it wasn’t bad but aggravating. I realized that the road had been treated because of a forecast of snow. The car was trying to follow the white lines formed by the road treatment! I switched off the lane assistance system and everything smoothed out. Another sensor that gets fooled by freezing rain is the pedestrian alert system.
These new driver assistant systems have been critical for reducing accidents over the last decade so keeping them activated is particularly important. However, under certain conditions human intervention is required even with the use of ADAS systems.
