kingofire

Nope just the eyes! Other than that she is a cutie!

LRM1

I am of course just kidding. It's one of those programs that distorts faces.

mg-E550

I thought that was your maid? Too cheap to leave the lights on when she cleans so she's developed great night vision!!

kingofire

Haha, I knew you were kidding but I thought I had seen her in a movie but couldn't remember for sure.

LRM1

That was pretty #$%ing funny

But no, it wasn't from me being too cheap to leave the lights on, it was from me making her read every owner's manual for every object I own, cover to cover.

Diesel Benz

I'm not fully convinced you were honest. You could be like me, browsing the manual through but not finding what is actually printed there.

I usually don't like questions that are easily covered by the manual but I find an honest question like this quite OK.

LRM1

I was just being honest that I hadn't really expended much effort to dig through the manual for an answer. I knew that if I posted the question without the caveat that I hadn't read the manual, then instead of being called lazy for not bothering, I would have been called stupid for not thinking of looking in the manual. It was a lose-lose proposition.

I also wanted to get people's feelings towards the operation - the fact that it wasn't easily discoverable without having to look at the manual. I mean the car went from my 2008 which had a button for the headlamp washers (really easy) to looking all over the place for a control of some sort, then even questioning whether I had the washers at all, I was curious to see if like me, others thought this was a strange way to make the operation "better".

Manual or not, I can't understand how every "nth" use of the windshield washer is a good design idea. Like others have pointed out, what if I just washed the car? What if there is snow all over the front? Do I have to use the windshield washer 10 times in 5 minutes just to clean my headlights? Even on a cost basis, there are plenty of "blank" buttons inside the car where they could have placed a button.

Alas, we (myself included) got too caught up in the "you're too lazy to read the manual", to even get into what the original question was about. I found it ironic considering if I were that lazy I would have just called my service advisor instead.

reckrab

I gotta agree, not my favorite feature. I like it better than my previous car (Lexus) though. That one sprayed EVERY time you washed the windshield with the lights on. A seperate button would certainly be nice.

Beausoleil

As the person who innocently answered the OP, I got a surprise that this thread is still going. My first reaction to the thread was that in over 30 years I've never actively thought about specifically cleaning my headlights. I couldn't even say which cars I've owned had h/light washers. But I too think Mercedes needs to re-think. In Europe (and elsewhere as far as I know), Xenon headlights must be accompanied by headlight washers by law. I don't know why for sure but always assumed that there is an issue regarding dazzling oncoming drivers when there are impurities on the glass. If so, we could be causing a lot of problems for others before the car eventually decides to wash the lights if this only happens on every tenth occasion that we identify grime on the windscreen.

If the law exists for the above reason, the legislators might want to look at Mercedes' failed attempt to be clever.

LRM1

This kind of ties in with our "would have been nice to have thread". Who knows, maybe it saved them $100 per car to run the added wires and button?