New flex lanes in Arizona confusing vehicle ADAS features

Newly opened “flex lanes” on I-17 in Arizona are causing issues for vehicles with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), such as lane assist, local media are reporting. 

Phoenix’s Fox10 reports that extra dashing on the lanes is causing systems to incorrectly signal to drivers that they are heading the wrong way or drifting out of the lane. 

The flex lanes run adjacent to the existing southbound lanes for about eight miles between Black Canyon City and Sunset Point. They create an additional two-lane roadway that carries one direction of traffic at a time and can alternate between northbound and southbound directions during peak travel times, or if there is a crash or another emergency situation that causes traffic delays, according to an I-17 project webpage.

The lanes are opened as needed, and the direction depends on where traffic is the heaviest. 

“Our computers can only do so much at a time,” Tyler Rhodes, education manager at Universal Technical Institute (UTI), told Fox10.

He said that vehicle sensors typically look for solid white or yellow lines and can be confused by the abundance of dotted lines used on the flex lanes. 

Tom Varrone, UTI technical team lead, told the news station that drivers will likely need to turn off their lane assist while using the flex lane. 

The Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) told the news station that it has not received any official complaints about the issue. 

“When roadways are reconfigured, vehicle navigation software and mapping systems need to be updated to reflect the new configuration,” ADOT said in a statement to the news outlet. “While ADOT doesn’t manage in-vehicle navigation systems, we will follow up with car manufacturers to encourage them to update their navigation software to reflect the I-17 flex lane configurations.” 

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Photo of flex lanes on I-17 courtesy of the Arizona Department of Transportation.