20 A key consideration for the long-term acceptability of fully autonomous vehicles on the open road (SAE Level 5) is the quality of support – including updates, maintenance and repair – that the automotive industry can provide for vehicles expected to last two to three decades and pass through the hands of multiple owners. To gain an insight into the challenges that such support involves we spoke with Pamela ‘Pam’ Oakes, who has years of experience running automotive repair shops and training technicians to work on increasingly sophisticated technologies, including advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Fourth-generation tech Oakes describes herself as a fourthgeneration automotive technician, tracing her connection with the discipline to a great-grandfather who changed career from beat officer in the Detroit Police Department during World War I. The move came at the urging of his wife, who had just had a baby (Pam’s grandfather) and wanted her husband to be in a less dangerous job, anticipating the prohibition of alcoholic drinks in the US and the crimewave that would accompany it. Success as a truck mechanic and production manager followed, leading him to open his own workshop, where, ironically, he ended up fixing trucks used by a group of notorious bootleggers – the Purple Gang. “I remember asking him what they did while he fixed their vehicles: drank and played cards,” Oakes recalls. Her grandfather and father, Jerry, went into the same industry. By the late 1960s, Jerry had become a steering and suspension specialist, who set up the Daytona-winning Chevrolet Corvettes and Corvairs in the 1967-68 seasons. A child of the 1960s, Oakes grew up in Detroit around muscle cars and the people who built, fixed, tuned and raced them. Today, following a varied career with major automotive service companies in the US, she runs autoINENG.io, her own ADAS consulting business. An automotive maintenance expert and ADAS educator tells Peter Donaldson how she started out fixing her colleagues’ cars on the side before switching to the job she loves December/January 2025 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Talking shop ADAS is paving the way for autonomy, with BMW offering Level 2 and Level 3 driving automation in its latest 7 Series saloon, claiming the first such combination on the market. Both are a long way from Level 5 (Image courtesy of BMW)
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