Tampa Bay Automotive Innovator Earns National Recognition for ADAS2Alignment Technology

Pam Oakes’ ADAS2Alignment wins 2026 MOTOR Top 20 Tools Award for technology connecting vehicle alignment, ADAS calibration and documentation

TAMPA BAY, Fla. — The cameras and radar systems watching Tampa Bay’s roads aren’t just mounted on autonomous vehicles or high-end luxury cars. They’re traveling across the Howard Frankland Bridge, I-75, and the Selmon Expressway every day – in family SUVs, pickups, work trucks and commercial vehicles.

And they all depend – in one way or another – on something decidedly less high-tech: where the vehicle is actually pointing.
That relationship is behind ADAS2Alignment, an automotive technology developed in the Tampa Bay area by longtime automotive professional Pam Oakes and recently named a 2026 MOTOR Top 20 Tools Award winner.

ADAS2Alignment was developed to document the relationship between a vehicle’s mechanical alignment geometry and its advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) calibration-recalibration – helping to determine whether the direction the vehicle is mechanically traveling agrees with where its electronic sensors are expected to be looking – and if not, the corrections that need to be made.
It’s a relationship increasingly relevant to nearly every segment of transportation on Tampa Bay’s roadways.

Automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, lane-departure warning, lane-keeping systems and other driver-assistance features depend on cameras, RADAR, and other fusion. Those sensors can require calibration following common repairs ranging from windshield replacement and collision work to steering-suspension services.

But Oakes says completing a calibration is only part of the equation.

“A scan tool can say the calibration was successful, and the alignment measurements can all be sitting in green boxes,” Oakes said. “But that doesn’t necessarily tell you how those individual measurements interact – or what direction the vehicle’s safety sensors are actually “looking” while traveling down the road. That’s the information we wanted to document, improve the vehicle’s sensor path along Tampa Bay roadways.”

The technology also incorporates ride-height variations and altered vehicles, expanding its application beyond passenger cars and SUVs to pickups and commercial vehicles ranging from Class 1 through Class 8.

That gives the technology potential relevance across Tampa Bay – from the factory set car or truck commuting I-275 to a modified pickup, delivery van, municipal fleet vehicle or heavy truck moving freight through the region.

For Oakes, however, ADAS2Alignment isn’t simply a software concept. It grew out of decades spent repairing vehicles and working directly with motorists.

Before relocating to the Tampa Bay area, Oakes founded Pam’s Motor City Automotive & Tires in Fort Myers in 1995 – twice recognized nationally for its repair-service. She spent 20 years building and operating the 12-bay automotive repair business before selling it in 2015.

That experience gave her a perspective that now crosses several parts of the automotive industry: shop owner, technician, technical trainer, author, and nationally recognized SME consultant-witness in the automotive industry.

Since moving to Tampa Bay, Oakes has continued working nationally in automotive training, advanced vehicle technology and ADAS. Her work has included technical instruction in ADAS, vehicle electronics and diagnostics, along with participation in industry committees addressing ADAS service and development, calibration for Tier 1/OE businesses, and a voting member of several SAE committees.

Her expert-witness work also exposed another side of the same issue: what happens when a repair is questioned months or years later and the documentation becomes the primary evidence of what was – or wasn’t – done correctly.

That helped shape one of the principles behind ADAS2Alignment.

“Documentation is defensibility,” Oakes said. “The technician may know the vehicle was repaired correctly. The shop may know it. But when somebody reviews that repair later, the documentation must be able to show it.”

The issue is becoming more significant as ADAS moves deeper into the mainstream vehicle population.

Windshields now carry cameras. Bumpers and grilles conceal ADAS sensors. Steering, suspension, alignment and ride height can affect the mechanical references used by these electronic driver-assistance systems. A relatively routine repair can therefore intersect with technology responsible for helping a vehicle brake, steer or maintain its position on the roadway.

For motorists, most of that technology operates unnoticed in the background.

For Oakes, that’s precisely why validating and documenting it matters.

“These systems are operating on vehicles beside us every day,” she said. “The driver doesn’t see the alignment angles or the sensor aiming. They expect the vehicle to respond the way it was designed to respond. Our job on the service side is to be able to document how that vehicle is responding.

“I spent 20 years owning a shop and solving problems one vehicle at a time,” Oakes said. “Today the technology is different, but the fundamental question hasn’t changed: Can you show that the vehicle was right when you handed the keys back to the customer?”

The MOTOR Top 20 Tools Awards have recognized innovative automotive tools and technologies for decades, highlighting products developed to help automotive professionals diagnose, service and repair increasingly complex vehicles. She will be among the other 19 recognized designers at an awards reception at AAPEX/SEMA this November, in Las Vegas.