The one piece of good news is that this collision avoidance technology really won’t even hit the market with 100% of the on the road vehicles until 2050. Good to know right? Your response is still going to wonder if there are no collisions, does that mean you no longer have a job? When 2050 does come, chances are that there will be a lot less collisions than what we are used to now.
2050 sounds like it’s a long ways off, it is, but change isn’t. Take for example that there are some vehicles that already have collision avoidance systems plus at least 80% of vehicles coming off the assembly line have some sort of advanced materials; aluminum, high-strength and ultra high strength steel, ultra steel, carbon fiber, and the list goes on and on.
As a PDR technician, these are the types of information that you need to stay ahead of for several reasons but mostly because you need to know what the automaker’s repair recommendations are and in fact may discover that they don’t want repairs but replacements only. If you don’t follow or know the recommendations you may very well get sued by your customer once they find out. Why? because you may have just destroyed the manufacturer’s warranty. Which means you have destroyed the resell value of the vehicle and so much more.
The only solution that you have is to stay in the know about industry changes which you can find here in our blog, get additional training from the Dent Repair School, and practice on totaled vehicles that are at the junk yard. Even this will require some research because in some cases, like Jaguar or BMW, their hood may be aluminum but their panels could be some form of steel.
