Who Requires the Scan
Short answer: If your car is a Honda or Acura and your shop is in American Honda's certified collision programme, the scan is required. The requirement comes from a contract that shop signed with American Honda, which makes a pre-scan and a post-scan mandatory for every Honda or Acura vehicle involved in a collision. If your shop is not in that programme, nothing in this contract requires it to scan anything, and nothing on this page says otherwise. We found no federal law or regulation that requires it, and we found nothing that obliges your insurer to pay for it.
The clause that actually requires it
[COMPANY] The Honda and Acura Certified Collision Program Terms and Conditions, the nineteen-page PDF dated 02012025, contains this sentence. We opened the document and confirmed the sentence ourselves on 2026-09-05:
"The Shop must conduct an American Honda-approved pre-scan and an American Honda-approved post-scan for every Honda and/or Acura vehicle involved in a collision as per the Honda and Acura position statements and the OEM position statement put forth on behalf of American Honda by the Alliance for Automotive Innovators."
We call this a signed instrument because the document says so in its own words. Above the signature line, confirmed on the same reading:
"By signing below, the Shop acknowledges and agrees that, if the Shop is designated a Honda and Acura Certified Body Shop, it will be bound by and shall comply with the Agreement, including the Terms and Conditions and all Program Requirements set forth therein."
Read who is bound. The shop is, by agreement with American Honda. You are not a party to that contract and neither is the company paying for your repair. The obligation to scan your car exists because a manufacturer and a repair business agreed it does, which is a different thing from a rule that anyone can enforce on your behalf.
The shape of the clause is worth getting right, because a common shorthand gets it backwards. The word "collision" sits inside binding text here, in a clause whose verb is "must". It appears again in the contract's training requirements, which the document frames as a choice between two staffing pathways separated by the word OR. The first is "At least two (2) structural collision repair technicians and one (1) estimator." The second is "At least one (1) structural collision repair technician, one (1) non-structural collision repair technician, and one (1) estimator." Either way the shop must field at least one structural collision repair technician. The narrower and more useful point is what the mandatory scan clause names: a diagnostic read. On our own reading of that contract on 2026-09-05, the words "calibration", "calibrate", "aiming" and "ADAS" do not appear anywhere in it, while "scan", "pre-scan", "post-scan" and "structural" all do.
What the contract points at, and what that document says
The scan clause requires the scan "as per the Honda and Acura position statements", so we opened the position statement it points to. [COMPANY] Its printed title is "POST-COLLISION DIAGNOSTIC SCAN AND CALIBRATION REQUIREMENTS FOR HONDA AND ACURA VEHICLES", dated May 2019, read on 2026-09-05.
That document goes further than the contract does. Its opening sentence reads:
"It is the position of American Honda that all vehicles[*] involved in a collision[dagger] must have the following minimum diagnostic scans, inspections, and/or calibrations done to avoid improper repair:"
Two footnote markers in that sentence are the document's own, one on "vehicles" and one on "collision"; we have written the second in brackets because this page is kept to plain characters. They sit on the two nouns the sentence turns on. We have not read what those footnotes say, so we cannot tell you which vehicles and which collisions American Honda means to cover.
The body of the statement says that safety and driver assistive systems "will require inspections, calibration, and/or aiming after collision", and that because such systems often will not display fault codes during a scan, "so aiming and/or calibration may be required". It also states: "Weight sensor calibration is also required when front passenger seat components have been removed or replaced."
So American Honda tells shops in writing that your car may need its cameras and radar re-aimed after a crash. Whether that requirement is legally carried into the shop's contract by the words "as per the Honda and Acura position statements" is a question of contract construction, and no reported case testing any of these clauses has been found by this project. We do not claim to know whether a Honda certified shop is contractually bound to calibrate your car, and anyone who tells you the answer is settled should be asked to show you the case.
How the shop's compliance is actually measured
A certification is worth what its audit checks. [COMPANY] We read American Honda's 2026 Certified Collision audit checklist on 2026-09-05. The scan is policed item by item:
"Is the shop using the iHDS software to scan vehicles?"
"If using iHDS and scanning is Sublet to Dealer or third-party, take a photo of a paid invoice for the scanning service."
The auditor wants documentary proof: a photo of a recent report from a Honda or Acura vehicle, and, where the scan was farmed out to a dealer or a third party, a photo of the paid invoice for it.
Now the other half. On that same reading, the words "calibration", "calibrate", "aiming" and "aim" do not appear anywhere on the checklist. "ADAS" appears once, in a line about cleaning the car and restoring the customer's memory settings before delivery. So the audit demands a paid invoice to prove the scan happened when the shop sends it out, and never asks whether the calibration that the same manufacturer's own document calls a requirement was performed by anyone at all. Whether that silence is deliberate we cannot say. What we can say is that this checklist is the machinery that decides whether the shop keeps its certification, and calibration is not on it.
The equipment list points the same way. American Honda's Required Tools and Equipment page, read 2026-09-05, requires "Honda validated software for vehicle scanning". Search it for calibration hardware and there is none: no calibration target, no radar or ADAS tool. The single occurrence of the word "aiming" on that page is "Headlight aiming device".
Where federal law is, and where it is not
[STATUTE] The federal regulation closest to the question is 49 CFR Part 595, which exempts certain work from the "make inoperative" prohibition in 49 U.S.C. 30122. Its purpose clause at 49 CFR 595.2, which we confirmed on two independent hosts, the eCFR and Cornell's Legal Information Institute, both on 2026-09-05, states:
"The purpose of this part is to provide an exemption from the "make inoperative" provision of 49 U.S.C. 30122 that permits motor vehicle dealers and motor vehicle repair businesses to install retrofit air bag on-off switches and to otherwise modify motor vehicles to enable people with disabilities to operate or ride as a passenger in a motor vehicle."
The purpose clause names two exemptions. The part itself carries more than two subjects. Read on the eCFR on 2026-09-05, Part 595 has four subparts: A, General; B, Retrofit On-Off Switches for Air Bags; C, Vehicle Modifications To Accommodate People With Disabilities; and D, Modifications to Law Enforcement Vehicles, whose single section, 49 CFR 595.9, is titled "Automatic emergency braking". One subpart of this part therefore does reach an advanced driver assistance system, in police vehicles. What it does not reach is the repair of your car after a crash: across the whole of Part 595, on that reading, the words "collision" and "calibration" do not appear.
[AGENCY] The one NHTSA document about collision repair that we opened binds nobody, because it is an interpretation letter rather than a rule. It went to Alan Nappier of Earl Stewart Toyota on 4/17/15 over the signature of O. Kevin Vincent, Chief Counsel, and it sets the standard this way:
"Instead, under 30122, when any repair to a vehicle is completed, the vehicle must be returned to the customer with the safety systems capable of functioning at least as well as they were able to when the vehicle was received by the repair shop."
The same letter says the statute "does not require repair shops to restore safety systems damaged in a collision to a new or pre-crash condition." Note what is missing from a letter that is explicitly about safety systems after a crash: "calibration", "aiming" and "ADAS" appear nowhere in it.
The industry agreement your shop may have heard about
[COMPANY] In July 2023 vehicle manufacturers and repair trade bodies signed an Automotive Repair Data Sharing Commitment, and it is the document most often waved at questions like yours. We re-read it on 2026-09-05. Its operative promises are about supply, not performance: "There shall be available access to vehicle diagnostic systems", and shops are to be able to buy "the same diagnostic and repair information" that dealers get. Where the Commitment mentions collision shops directly, the verb softens: "The parties shall develop a plan to educate both mechanical and collision repair facilities on the avenues by which they can access repair information".
The words "calibration", "calibrate", "ADAS" and "advanced driver assistance" do not appear in that document on our reading. We are not claiming that this puts calibration beyond its reach. A duty to supply diagnostic data can cover calibration data without ever using the word, and at least one state right-to-repair statute defines the data it covers so broadly that it very likely does. The narrow point is the one that answers your question: an agreement about what shops can buy creates no obligation about what must be done to your car, and none about who pays for it.
Why your insurer can argue
The requirement to scan your car is real, and it comes from a manufacturer. It does not come from a statute, from a federal safety regulation, or from your insurance policy, and that is exactly why the conversation at the counter turns into a negotiation. Your shop cannot hand the adjuster a citation. It can hand over a contract it signed with American Honda and a position statement, and those are documents the payer is free to argue about.
What we could not verify
- Whether the contract's reference to the position statements legally carries the calibration requirements into the shop's obligations. Unlitigated, and no reported case on any of these clauses has been found.
- The two footnotes in the position statement, marked on "vehicles" and on "collision". They qualify the scope of the manufacturer's own position and this project has not read them.
- Whether any other manufacturer's certification programme works this way. Everything above is American Honda. The OEConnection Collision Performance Network shop agreement is not published, and one manufacturer is not a sector.
- A February 2025 memorandum and order in the Massachusetts data access litigation has not been read by this project, and may bear on how these access duties reach collision work.
- All of our "does not appear" findings come from a fetching tool that summarises documents, on one rendering, on one day, with a set of known-present words searched in the same call as a control. Direct byte-level download is blocked for this project by organisation egress policy, so no word-absence claim here has been tested against the raw file.
- Nothing here is about your policy or your particular shop. On whether your insurer owes you the cost of this scan, this page makes no claim.
What you can do
Ask the shop three specific questions and ask for paper. Was a pre-scan and a post-scan performed, was either sublet, and can you see the invoice. That is precisely the proof American Honda demands of its own certified shops, so a certified shop should have it. Then ask the same about calibration and aiming, in those words, because the audit that keeps that shop certified will not ask on your behalf. If the answer is that calibration was needed and not done, the documents above are what you would put in front of the payer, and we will not pretend they are a remedy.
Corrections
- The brief that commissioned the research behind this article claimed that "collision" never appears in an operative clause of any binding instrument in this area. That is wrong. The Honda contract clause quoted at the top of this page uses the word inside a sentence whose verb is "must", and the same contract requires, under either of its two training options, at least one structural collision repair technician. The corrected claim, which is what this page carries, is that the operation named in the mandatory clause is a diagnostic read.
- An earlier version of this page printed the first of those two training options on its own, as though the contract required two structural technicians and an estimator outright. The document separates the options with the word OR. Both options are now quoted above, along with the requirement common to them.
- An earlier version of this page described 49 CFR Part 595 as having two uses and as not being about collision work. Part 595 has four subparts, and Subpart D, at 49 CFR 595.9, is titled "Automatic emergency braking", which is an advanced driver assistance system. The characterisation has been replaced with the subpart list. The word-absence findings, previously scoped to a single subpart, are now stated across the whole part, where they were confirmed on 2026-09-05.
- An earlier internal reading quoted the 2023 Commitment as promising "diagnostic repair tools". Our reading on 2026-09-05 returned "diagnostic tools incorporating the same functional capabilities" instead. The quotation has been cut rather than repaired.
- An earlier internal reading described the Required Tools and Equipment page as listing roughly 150 items; ours returned roughly 80 to 90. We assert neither figure and have removed the count from this page.
- The same earlier reading did not test the word "aiming" on the equipment page. It is present, once, in "Headlight aiming device".
- The Honda position statement is filed by the certification programme's own reference under a short name, but its printed title is "POST-COLLISION DIAGNOSTIC SCAN AND CALIBRATION REQUIREMENTS FOR HONDA AND ACURA VEHICLES". On our reading, confirmed again on 2026-09-05, the strings "pre-scan" and "post-scan" do not appear in it; it uses "preliminary diagnostic scan" and "post-repair diagnostic scan", one for each half of the contract's pair. The contract's mandatory language and the incorporated document's language are therefore not word for word the same. An earlier version of this page cut the statement's opening sentence at "the following minimum", which dropped the word "all", both footnote markers, and the three nouns the sentence exists to carry. The full sentence appears above.
- The NHTSA sentence was confirmed in four consecutive fragments rather than as one string, because the fetching tool truncates long verbatim requests. An earlier internal rendering dropped its opening clause and presented the remainder as a complete sentence, which narrowed it. A previous version of this bullet claimed the opening clause had been restored while the block quote above still began at "When any repair". The sentence now appears above with its opening clause, "Instead, under 30122,", and was re-confirmed on the NHTSA page on 2026-09-05.
Sources
- Honda and Acura Certified Collision Program Terms and Conditions, PDF dated 02012025 [COMPANY]. https://www.hondaandacuracertifiedcollision.com/Content/downloads/HondaandAcura%20TC%2002012025.pdf . Scan clause, signature block and both training options quoted from our own reading, read on 2026-09-05.
- American Honda position statement, "POST-COLLISION DIAGNOSTIC SCAN AND CALIBRATION REQUIREMENTS FOR HONDA AND ACURA VEHICLES", May 2019 [COMPANY]. https://www.oem1stop.com/sites/default/files/Honda_Pos_Diagnostic-Scans_Revised_FINAL(5-19).pdf . Opening sentence, footnote markers and scan terminology read on 2026-09-05. The text of the two footnotes was not returned to us and is not relied on here.
- Honda and Acura Certified Collision Audit, 2026 [COMPANY]. https://www.hondaandacuracertifiedcollision.com/Content/downloads/Honda%20and%20Acura%20Certified%20Collision%20Audit%20-%202026.pdf . Read on 2026-09-05.
- Honda and Acura Certified Collision, Required Tools and Equipment [COMPANY]. https://www.hondaandacuracertifiedcollision.com/RequiredToolsAndEquipment . Read on 2026-09-05.
- 49 CFR Part 595 [STATUTE, regulatory]. Subpart structure, the title of 49 CFR 595.9, and the absence of "collision" and "calibration" across the whole part, read on the eCFR at https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-V/part-595 on 2026-09-05. The purpose clause at 49 CFR 595.2 was confirmed on two independent hosts, both read on 2026-09-05: the eCFR at https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/section-595.2 and Cornell's Legal Information Institute at https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/595.2 . The application sentence naming dealers, motor vehicle repair businesses and rental companies sits at 49 CFR 595.3, which this project has not read in full.
- NHTSA interpretation letter to Alan Nappier, 4/17/15, O. Kevin Vincent, Chief Counsel [AGENCY]. https://www.nhtsa.gov/interpretations/30122-make-inoperative-alan-nappier-april-14 . Read on 2026-09-05. The quoted strings were separately confirmed on a second, independent host, Repairer Driven News at https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2024/05/13/new-aeb-rule-will-require-repairers-to-ensure-compliance/ , also read on 2026-09-05; that page attributes the words to NHTSA but ties them to the automatic emergency braking rulemaking rather than naming this letter, so treat the letter itself as the primary source.
- Automotive Repair Data Sharing Commitment, July 2023, as reproduced in the appendix to the joint press release hosted by MEMA [COMPANY]. https://www.mema.org/system/files/Ext.%20Comm.%20-%20Press%20Release%20-%202023%20-%20Right%20to%20Repair%20Joint%20Agreement%20Press%20Release%20July%202023%20(ID%2012503).pdf . Read on 2026-09-05.
General consumer information: not legal, insurance, or financial advice. Requirements, coverage, and practices vary by state, policy, and manufacturer.