Vehicle Scanner Software

[Jeannine Lander]

Mywife and I have to go through a vehicle scanner at our place of work. My wife is pregnant with our first child and I am worried about any potential harmful effect the radiation might have on my wife and the fetus. There is a lot of material about airport scanners on this website, but very little information about vehicle scanners. Kindly let us know if we need to worry or if there is anything we can do to avoid possible health risks. My second question is about possible human errors with these scanners. Are these devices equipped to handle any possible mistakes from the operator using the machine, e.g., an untrained operator using a higher radiation dosage that can be potentially harmful for passengers?

This is an excellent question. In short, there should be no additional risk of harmful effects for the fetus with a properly operating vehicle scanner.

I am going to use radiation dose information from another Ask The Experts answer 11239 so you can also take a look at that answer if you'd like.

I tried to find Saudi Arabia radiation regulations and did; however, they were in Arabic so I will be relating the radiation doses from the vehicle scanner to radiation dose limits in practice in the United States.

As you can see in answer 11239, the radiation dose to a person in a vehicle going through a vehicle scanner is approximately 0.05 microsievert (uSv, a unit of effective radiation dose). To share why I believe there would be no additional risk of harmful effects, let me offer some dose comparisons.

Vehicle scanner = 36 uSv y-1 (0.05 uSv scan-1 or for coming and going in one day 0.1 uSv day-1 so about 36 uSv year-1).

United States background radiation = 3,000 uSv year-1.

United States radiation limit for a member of the general public = 1,000 uSv year-1.

United States radiation limit for pregnant worker exposed at work = 5,000 uSv year-1.

Lowest radiation dose shown to cause harmful fetal effects = 60,000 uSv at one time.

The radiation dose from your daily travel through a vehicle scanner is very small compared to natural background radiation (that we each receive from various environmental sources) and well below radiation dose levels shown to cause harmful effects. Of course, your actual radiation dose might vary depending on the speed of the scan and the parameters used to perform the scan (x-ray energy, etc.), but it is highly unlikely the fetal dose would even approach any of the other radiation doses I've listed.

As to your question about operator error, I do not know if the equipment itself could detect an error, but there are emergency off buttons if an error is detected by an operator.

Kelly Classic

Certified Medical Health Physicist

Fully automated x-ray systems for vehicle & freight designed to screen cars, trucks, cargo containers at ports, border crossings and cargo facilities. Each scanner is fully automated and allows drivers to remain safely inside their vehicles during screening, expediting traffic flow at busy checkpoints.

Please note, while Enhanced Diagnostics may not yet be offered on your vehicle, all other BlueDriver features, including trouble code lookup and Repair Reports work on ANY vehicle with an OBD2 port.

I have been using it for 22-months. No problems whatsoever. My car never returned a fault code. Check engine light never turned on. For 22-months, I was completely happy with the car as it gave me 0 problems and it has performed really well.

Last night, I decided to go to my car's dealership for an oil change. They said my car has a recall for the rear O2 sensor software; that it needs to be reprogrammed. I said, "OK whatever, do what you have to do, as long as I get my regular oil change and go home after."

My question is, are they correct to say that these OBDII devices can mess up the ECU? To my knowledge, they only read, and cannot write to the ECU. It is my belief that they messed up flashing the ECU with the software update.

As communication interfaces, they will never write data to the bus on their own, but they will write whatever they are told to by a connected bluetooth device. Of course, it is possible to mess up the ECU this way, e.g. by trying to flash the wrong firmware, change config data, or whatever the ECU allows to be done via OBDII. But Torque does not know how to do this, and I can't imagine that it's possible to send data saying "kill yourself" accidentally.

On the other side, the shop had to connect its own device and communicate with the ECU, too. And their software is much more powerful than Torque, and for sure knows every command that can be sent to the ECU, including the potentially dangerous ones. For me, it sounds much more likely that they accidentally messed up your ECU and now blame your device. The problem is: They found a device connected to your OBDII port which shouldn't be there, and now blame it, while it will be impossible to find out what really happened.

Apart from some "killer commands", the ECU might have been destroyed electrically. The OBDII-Interface can implement several different data buses with different voltage levels. If the bus lines get connected to +12V, this could destroy something. If I were the designer, I would make it so that 12V on any of the OBDII lines would not roast the electronics, but I am not the designer...

On the other side, it sounds unlikely that your device just built a short circuit when the car was at the shop...

At times, one may encounter a freak occurrence in which a module locks up while in communication via scan tool. Another possibility is that the vehicle's battery did not maintain a steady and/or sufficient voltage while updating the software (unlikely). This sometimes can't be accomplished with a battery charger; a Midtronics GR8 style variable amperage charger or equivalent may be required if the battery is unstable.

Again, depends on model year. Some older vehicles have a tendency to throw errors mid update, after which, are unable to complete a recovery process leaving the module useless, therefore requiring replacement.

I would suspect that it was the dealer's system / ecu flash attempt that killed your ecu. My evidence - being a member of the jaguar forum where similar things have happened : a small update that fails then needs 2 days or more to fix - just google it. However, proving it is them is another thing... good luck.

Simple OBD readers such as those based on the ELM327 are basic, but they do allow mostly unfettered access to the engine ECU. Most of the time, there is a graphical client on top displaying the raw data in a human-friendly format. However, some clients (e.g. OBD Wiz, which I use on my diagnostic PC) support typing commands directly to the ECU through this interface. As these are low-level commands, there is likely minimal error checking and I could, conceivably, send a command that would cause the engine to stop and not restart - altering the base ignition timing, for example.

For most cars, however, this is not a permanent fault. Most cars have ECUs that are read-only. The data in memory can be manipulated, yes, but if the battery is disconnected, the memory is cleared and the ECU will revert to factory defaults. Only specialist ECUs actively support overwriting the air/fuel map.

That's not to say you shouldn't approach this with caution, as you can still do some lasting damage, for example, setting the ignition timing so far advanced that it causes detonation, which can destroy the engine.

2000 Nissan Altima was stalling on acceleration. Still starts though when engine dies but stalls again when accelerating or under load. The "Service Engine Soon" light was on so a friend connected his OTC Scanner and soon after that, the car won't start. Couldn't get any error codes. It turns over, but won't start. Left it at his place overnight and came back the next morning to troubleshoot. Tried starting it and it starts. Took it home, changed fuel filter & oil. Ran ok for a day then stalled again when my daughter was driving it. After much research, I decided to buy my own OBD2 Scanner from Amazon. Got an Ancel 410 for $73.00.

In the meantime, I you tubed other probable causes and found a leaky vacuum hose that was chewed by a mouse or rat that lived in the engine over the winter. I took out it's nest awhile back. Looked like a Christmas wreath. That seemed to fix the stalling problem but the "service Engine soon" light was still on but the car was still running fine after a few road tests. Looks like the leaky hose was causing the stalling and causing the "Service Engine Soon" light to come on.

NOw that the car was running again, My friend came over again with his OTC OBD Scanner to try and scan for error codes and was able to get the following codes. (My Scanner did not arrive yet) P0100, P0505, P0325,P1490, P0446,P0464. His connecting the OBD Scanner again killed the car and would not start again after it was running fine already. Still needed to get the "SES" light off too!

So back to youtube. Apparently, the scanner sometimes messes the ECM and has to be hard reset. This can be done by removing both battery terminals and crossing or connecting them together for about 10 seconds(make sure both terminals are removed from the battery) this will discharge the capacitors and you should be able to start your car again.

After the entire cluster of warning lights lit up while I was driving, speedometer and tachometer stopped working, lost power steering and the AC, I was able to get my vehicle home, but once I turned it off, it wouldn't restart. This is the second time I've had this problem and I replaced my ECM, had my keys reprogrammed and I thought that had solve the problem. That was three weeks ago. This all recurred a couple of nights ago. Because I was going to do a scan on another vehicle, I unplugged my Zus vehicle health monitor from the OBD port and then wondered, "Slim chance, but what if my vehicle starts?" It did. Immediately.

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