Haptic Control Module
Generates touch as an output — and it does two quite different jobs, one trivial and one genuinely safety-related.
The trivial job is confirming input. A touchscreen or touch-sensitive panel has no moving parts and gives no natural confirmation that a press registered, so a small vibration supplies it. Losing that makes the controls feel dead and encourages longer glances away from the road.
The safety job is warning. Lane departure, blind spot and forward collision warnings are increasingly delivered as vibration — through the steering wheel, or the seat cushion or bolsters — rather than as sound. The reason is that a chime competes with music, conversation and road noise, while a vibration in the seat cannot be missed or mistaken for anything else.
So on a vehicle using haptics as its primary warning channel, losing this module removes the warning rather than the confirmation — and the driver may have no idea, because a warning that does not arrive is invisible. Nothing on the dashboard shows a warning channel is missing. Worth establishing which your vehicle uses.
The actuators live in the seat cushion and the steering wheel, which puts their wiring in the two worst places on the vehicle: the under-seat harness and the clockspring.
Also known as: haptic feedback module, vibration module, haptic module, tactile feedback module
Referenced by 1 code
Codes involving this component (1)
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