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On our 2020 Cabriolet, we get an audible and visual warning when we cross an area where the lines on the road disappear on the side such as in an intersection. This happens when Active steer assist is on, the disitronic is on, there is no car indicated ahead in the disitronic display, and the speed is at least 40 mph. The warning is the display of a wheel with two hands that is normally green or gray; green when it is active and gray when passive. Instead, it turns red, becomes much larger, and beeps.
We did not see this issue with other cars with active lane keeping assist and I did not see it when test driving a 2019, but I think it is not likely that I had the same conditions. the manual says that where there is a lack of lines or other visiual problem, the system should turn passive and gray. Nothing says it should turn red and give an audio warning.
That’s interesting. I’ve always thought that there should be more of a warning when Distronic Plus or Active Distance Distronic active steering assist was deactivated due to loss of lines or for any reason. Just having the little steering wheel graphic turn from green to grey isn't enough and could go unnoticed. I’ve been driving and not noticed the steering assist disconnect. I think a more visible or even audible warning would be safer. My 2019 E53 operates the old way, no red or audible warning.
Red is when your hands have been removed from Steering wheel too long and you must return them or car will come to a stop...
Check manual under distronic w/steering assist portion.
I think sgawiser was talking about something different. He described a situation where steering assist goes inactive due to losing contact with lines or other references, not because the driver has been hands off too long. If that’s the case, it’s a new warning.
that is correct. Hands are on the wheel continuously and it only happens momentarily while you are driving across a section of road without the lines. if it was related to attention assist then it would not happen in that pattern and if you turn off active steering, it does not happen.
I could understand it momentarily going to red even though the manual says grey, but the audio warning is extremely distracting particularly if it happens over and over again on some roads.
that is correct. Hands are on the wheel continuously and it only happens momentarily while you are driving across a section of road without the lines. if it was related to attention assist then it would not happen in that pattern and if you turn off active steering, it does not happen.
I could understand it momentarily going to red even though the manual says grey, but the audio warning is extremely distracting particularly if it happens over and over again on some roads.
I agree that constant audio warnings would be annoying. Maybe there is a way to turn the audio warning off.
Amazingly enough, I have read the manual. This is NOT an issue with the active lane keeping assist as we can turn that off and it still happens. This is only the active steering. Also, as you can see from your post, there is no mention of the display turning to red. And this is NOT related to having your hands on the wheel; it happens when there are no lines on the road. I have driven with my hands off the wheel in the same circumstances as I have described and the system does not warn you for a period of time which is much longer than the interval between warnings if the intersections without lines are close together.
The dealer reports that other 2020's behave the same way and they are trying to figure out if there is any solution to the problem other than turning off steering assist.
The steering assist tied to the Distronic system is my only complaint after driving my AMG EQE SUV for nearly 2,000 miles. While the system works well, it is really annoying to see and hear the hands on steering wheel alert and audible “bong” even though my hands have been on the steering wheel. I’ve rarely gone more than 2-3 miles before it’ll alarm. It went on every 30-45 seconds during the trip to the airport and back the other day (45 mile round trip). Finally had to turn it off and go to passive assist mode instead of the active assist as it kept interrupting the news program I was listening to.
I’ve tried changing the setting from normal to sensitive with no difference.
Anybody else have a solution? Would like to use the Distronic Lane and Steering assist but it’s so annoying that I just can’t anymore.
My view (with a 2023 cab) and four decades of background working with warning indications on complex aircraft, so I've got expectations and it's easy to get confused by the symbology unless you go back to the book every now and then.
I had a discussion with the tech expert at our dealership and he noted that the presentation (but not the function) of the systems was dumbed down to avoid confusing less technically aware customers. I understand that, but I wonder if perhaps there should be an option for voice warnings, which we could switch off, to accompany the symbol behaviour and alert tones.
I have the driver assistance package and have audio warnings switched off (which only switches some off).
I'm referring to the small steering wheel next to the lane indication at the bottom of the display.
Grey wheel = insufficient lane marking to activate steering
Green = active
Red flash = momentary loss of adequate marking (which includes some junctions that it can't compute a steering solution for) No beep with audio off.
As an aside, I've had at least a couple of occasions (in 8500 miles since mid Oct 23) where it has attempted to steer me off a US single lane each way divided highway (dual carriageway in English) where a marked right exit matched a filter left to turn left marking. No warnings (which I wouldn't expect when it was actively steering), but I felt the tug right and was able to correct without any excessive drama.
09-26-2019, 11:13 AM
