I'm about to pre-order a 2006 CLK 350 and I have to make decisions about options. I live in SoCal, so being aware of traffic snarls saves lots of time and aggravation. Sirius has a channel devoted to traffic reports for major cities and I understand that Tele-Aid has a live operator that can help with directions and traffic reporting. Who has experience with either of these options? I'm not that interested in Sirius for the music since my iPod does it all, but if their traffic navigation is great I would consider the expense.

The other cool option might be if Sirius actually comes through with TrafNav, an service that integrates with your Navigation to show where the traffic tieups are and will route you to less congested roads. Pioneer has this in their Avic 2 Navigation system.
Decisions, decisions. Thanks for any info

 

I have both Sirius and Tele-Aid. If you're a commuter, the Tele-Aid service is pretty useful, but not perfect. You can enter several "commutes" or routes on the MBUSA Owners Online site, along with the times you drive them. When you push the "i" Tele-Aid button and say "traffic", the system will match your location and time to the pre-stored routes and give you traffic conditions from end-to-end along the entire route. I recently tried to see if the system would let me define a commute from Fairfax, Virginia to Charlotte, NC, and it wouldn't let me, so I think you're constrained to define them within a metropolitan area.

If you're not on your pre-set commute, the system will give you traffic information in a 5 mile radius around your present position. In some large cities, like the D.C. area, it means you will hear information about some things that aren't really close to where you are, but that's certainly also true of Sirius.

If you say "route assistance", you will get an operator who can help you navigate in real time around things. I recently used this on a drive from North Carolina to Virginia, and it was useful. They were able to help me figure out where I could divert to a parallel highway. I might have been able to divine this from my Nav system, but at the lower zoom settings, there are no street names on the COMAND Nav display.

The Sirius traffic information on any given channel is usually for a city pair, like Washington, D.C. + Baltimore, Maryland. This means that you may have to wait for one cycle before you hear the one you want. The Sirius traffic information will sometimes come with context that you won't get from Tele-Aid, but there is also more irrelevant information.

I rather like the Tele-Aid service, except for the time it takes for the system to establish the connection. Sirius (or XM for that matter) are useful if you want the traffic information to trickle into your subconscious while concentrating on driving. I use the two types of services differently, but they're both useful in their own way.

 

Is what you are describing part of the standard TeleAid package? From perusing the TeleAid website, it sounds like the traffic information is part of TeleTrek, which is an extra $75/year on top of the basic TeleAid subscription price.

In my opinion, TeleAid might have been useful around 1980 or so, but since the development of cellular phones, it really is rather expensive for what seems, at best, marginal utility.

Here in the San Francisco Area, I have 511 programmed into my voice dialing, and find that quite useful.

 

In the first year, the basic service is free, but yes, I was referring to what is now part of the "Luxury and Convenience" package. The package definitions have changed somewhat from those described on the web site, but the functionality is essentially the same.

Tele-Aid is good for some things other than traffic information. For example, I have heard the system allows the Mercedes-Benz troubleshooters to do some basic diagnostics/code reading in the event of vehicle malfunctions.

I have also been in one accident in the distant past where I was too disoriented post-crash to have dialed a cell phone. Although I have misgivings about the privacy issues inherent in these platforms, that previous accident and the wrecks I see every other day have led me to value the idea of someone who will take the initiative to call me if my airbags deploy.

I have tried a number of traffic services, including the free one on the TellMe (1-800-555-TELL) service. The 511 service is fairly sophisticated, but not all metropolitan areas have something directly analogous.

What I really want is information delivered directly to the COMAND platform via Tele-Aid or the Sirius data stream. I have seen systems in Japan that received real-time information from roadside beacons, and have heard about the subcarrier traffic data in Europe. It's nice when your GPS knows to reroute you automatically.

 

That does seem like the strongest reason for TeleAid, but it still seems like it's too much overhead for what one hopes is a very rare occurence. I'd have preferred they put the design and engineering effort towards better phone system integration, or the real-time traffic data.

True, but since it is available here (and I assume would gradually roll out countrywide), it makes TeleAid that much less useful.

The Acura RL has a partial integration - it can display traffic updates on the navigation system, but as far as I know will not automatically re-route. It seems the voice recognition system is also able to recognize street and city names for navigation data input, which would make the navigation system a lot nicer to use.

 

You will also be charge for minutes use. It may be different on the 2005 models and up