Bendix collision avoidance

My last company kept bringing in truck after truck that had that and every other cute, annoying bell and whistle you could possibly put in a truck. You hit the line on the shoulder you’d get blasted with a buzzing sound in the stereo speakers, you’d get within about 1/4 mile of a vehicle in front of you, the truck would brake. You unbuckled the seat belt going over 5-10 mph it would beep until you fastened it again. #### that!

 

In my freightliner u can disable the lane alert by popping off the black cover at top of passenger windshield. Theres a camera inside that black box and just pop the camera and point it at the dash
. never again will u get that annoying sound when u hit the white line

 

Im sure the dealer could get it out of the ecm .

 

Did you get it disabled?

 

Here's the deal with Bendix. To down grade you have to install a new Bendix ECU that doesn't have CA installed. No dealer level software can uninstall that program. The engine also has to be reprogrammed to take it out of it's programming too. Again, this is not dealer level programming with Internationals and you have to get a custom program from the factory. This is where legality starts to become a problem because you are now eliminating a safety feature the truck was built with. Not too many dealers want those headaches just to make a few bucks.

 

But is that collision avoidance stuff actually government mandated? If not, how does that cause any legal issues?

Not trying to argue or anything like that, just curious is all.

 

I believe at this time only stability control is mandated. As far as legal issues, anyone can be sued for anything at anytime. Since we are the experts and we are suppose to know better, downgrading a trucks safety features does in fact make it less safe on the road for the traveling public. This is where they can lay blame on us in my opinion. You can argue the shop has altered the braking system from how it was manufactured and taken part of that system away which is a violation of safety standards in it own rights, even though the extras are not mandated. It is a sticky situation with no precedence yet. To find out what would actually happen requires someone to volunteer, get into an accident involving severe injuries and/or fatalities and then face the lawsuit. Sorry, not interested in getting involved in the first place.