How Extreme Heat Could Damage Your Driver Assistance System

According to a citizen in Arizona, when the temperature is higher outside it affects the driver assistance system. In the heat, the driver assistance camera mounted on the windshield will turn off when the inside of the vehicle reaches a certain temperature. Because the camera creates its own heat while running, the extra heat will damage it.

Ideally, once you’ve activated the air conditioning and established a cooler temperature in the vehicle, the camera will turn on and provide warnings to the drivers. However, this citizen claims it takes fifteen minutes (the majority of his commute) to turn on, even when he has the air conditioning on as soon as he starts the vehicle.

If the idea is to make vehicles safer for drivers, is it helping them when they drive fifteen minutes before the warning systems are available? Sure, for years drivers have gone without any assistance so drivers should be able to drive safely when the system is not available.

And there are other options for maintaining the temperature in your vehicle, like parking in the shade, using a reflective window shade, and more you can typically find in your vehicle’s owner’s manual if you own a vehicle with driver assistance features.

But why is the industry charging consumers more money for a system which is not always available to help them?

These driver assistance systems are supposed to make our vehicles safer and reduce deaths in car accidents. You can read more about the pros and cons to autonomous vehicle technology here. But are we ready to depend on technology which can be affected so dramatically by weather conditions?

What do you think about the driver assistance system’s reaction to extreme heat? Should it be released to the public while it still has simple issues like this?