Tobias Marzell doesn’t think he’ll ever use the lane-centring feature on his 2021 Subaru Crosstrek again, after he believes it caused an accident during his morning commute last month.
Marzell was driving on Highway 30 near Brossard, Que., when he noticed the steering wheel tugging him a bit to the left. As he headed into a curve, Marzell said he made his own adjustments to keep the car to the left of the centre line.
All of a sudden, the steering “decided to jerk to the right heavily and instantly I collided with the vehicle on my right side,” said Marzell, who was travelling at about 100 kilometres per hour.
Marzell spends about two hours a day driving back and forth to work. It can be exhausting, so he often switched the feature on.
“You don’t always have to be firmly gripping the steering wheel and having to correct all the time,” said Marzell, 23. “It lets drivers relax a bit.”
Marzell bought the car from a Subaru dealership in the fall of 2022. Initially, he said the lane-assist feature was much more subtle and the tugging would stop as soon as he’d correct it.
But in the past few months, he said he felt the wheel tug much more aggressively, but nothing like what he experienced the day of the accident.
Thankfully, neither driver was hurt. But he is at fault for the roughly $10,000 in damage to his vehicle and about the same amount to the other driver’s vehicle.
Both Transport Canada and Subaru Canada are now looking into what happened, and whether it is related to the advanced driver assistance technology that is now common in new vehicles.
“Even the police officer said that it’s something that’s been happening more and more with these newer vehicles,” said Marzell. “It’s honestly kind of scary.”
CBC News asked Quebec provincial police if they are seeing more accidents related to lane-assist features, but they declined to comment.
Not all systems equal
This type of safety feature, in Subarus called Lane Keep Assist, but generally known as lane-centring assist, uses cameras and sensors to detect lane markings and makes adjustments to keep the vehicle centred in its lane and guard against drift.
“Active lane centring is really to help you negotiate small turns, just to alleviate the task of driving for a long time,” said Jesse Caron, an automotive expert for the Canadian Automobile Association (CAA) in Quebec.
As long as there are lane markings on the road, the car follows them. The system won’t work if there’s snow or anything covering the road.
When that happens, drivers will usually get a warning on the dashboard and the system is turned off automatically, said Caron.
He said the feature is intended for highway driving and the CAA recommends drivers avoid using it in the city due to construction and road work.
Since 2020, Transport Canada said it has received six complaints related to steering assist/lane departure on different makes and models.
The complaints were for different issues such as error messages, poor performance in icy and snowy conditions and abrupt steering correction while driving.
The CAA has not received any complaints about crashes linked to these features, but unless it resulted in a crash, people are unlikely to report it. Caron doesn’t know what happened to Marzell’s car, but suspects it misinterpreted what it was seeing.
Each system is programmed differently. Some are gentle, while others have more of a “ping pong” effect, which can be disconcerting if you’re not used to it, he said.
“You have to really counter it vigorously because sometimes it will really want to bring you somewhere you shouldn’t go,” he said.
Caron said this can happen when a car is passing heavy transport trucks that are travelling close to the centre line. The driver’s instinct is to give the truck a wider berth, but the system is programmed to keep you centred.
That’s why he says the feature “can’t replace a driver’s vigilance.”
“Paying attention and having a keen eye is still very important, especially on long drives,” he said.
Transport Canada investigating
After Marzell’s accident, he posted on a Subaru Facebook group about what happened.
Nearly 300 people commented on his post. One other driver reported a similar accident and shared photos of the damage. Others said they had turned the feature off because they found it too aggressive and didn’t like the feeling.
He contacted Subaru Canada, but the car manufacturer would not speculate on what caused the accident and told him to report the accident to his insurer.
“Should your insurer’s investigation identify a possible vehicle defect as a cause, the insurer will contact us, at which point we will carry a joint investigation,” the email read.
Marzell decided to complain to Transport Canada, which sent an investigator to check the car’s so-called black box and see what the computer registered before the collision.
But the impact was not severe enough to activate the recording, so the investigator wasn’t able to get any data on the vehicle’s behaviour.
Transport Canada also flagged the case to Subaru Canada, which sent an investigator of its own to run some diagnostic tests at the beginning of November, said Marzell.
He hopes the car manufacturer is able to figure out what went wrong.
A few months ago, he took his car into the Subaru dealership to have the windshield replaced. Usually, this calls for a complete re-calibration of the EyeSight Driver Assist System, which uses a stereo camera system mounted behind the windshield to monitor the road ahead. Marzell said he now wonders if it wasn’t calibrated properly.
“I think my premiums are going to skyrocket next year,” said Marzell, who finds that unfair. “It’s nothing I could control.”
Ask for information
Caron recommends people familarize themselves with any lane-assist features on their vehicle.
That can start at the dealership before you pick the vehicle up.
“Some dealers are so aware of this that they actually have what they call a second delivery,” said George Iny, executive director of the Automobile Protection Association.
“At the end of the month, they’re actually inviting vehicle purchasers, recent ones, to come in in the evening as a group for a presentation on the features of the vehicle.”
There’s also a lot of information online and on the manufacturer’s site about how the features work.
The APA also does road testing and of the Subaru models it has tested, the feature has reacted predictably, said Iny.
While there is documented evidence across all makes and models that technology, such as automatic emergency braking has resulted in a reduction in hit from behind collisions, the evidence is less clear when it comes to the lane assist feature, said Iny.
“The jury is still out,” he said.
Iny said the standards haven’t fully kept up with the fast-changing technology in the industry. Transport Canada is in the process of creating regulations.
In the United States, the CAA’s counterpart, AAA, has lobbied the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for better regulations including some uniformity in what these features are called.
The feature’s name or acronym is different across car brands, which can be confusing.
There is also a push to amend safety standards, which Canada would likely copy, but it’s a long process, said Caron.
Difficult to prove
Both Caron and Iny suspect it will be hard for Marzell to prove the car malfunctioned or caused the accident.
“When there’s an electronic component, it’s often difficult to duplicate and if it’s not recorded, you have to wait for other people to report similar problems,” said Iny.
He encourages drivers to contact Transport Canada if they have a serious complaint.
In an email, Transport Canada said it’s aware of a recent incident involving a Subaru Crosstrek and is closely monitoring any developments.
Subaru Canada said it values the safety of its owners and is investigating this incident.
Marzell doesn’t think he’ll use the feature on his car or any other car again.
“I just don’t trust it anymore,” he said. “I always want to be 100 per cent in control of the car from now on.”