Subaru Crosstrek driver blames car's lane-centring technology for accident
CBC
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.
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.
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