K-A

My 2010 didn't have this problem, while the 2011's stupidly do.

I can't understand the safety aspect of it going into Park while MOVING, while obviously it going into Park while STOPPED is essential, especially as sometime I notice I don't tap the stalk piece hard enough, and the car doesn't go into Park when I think it does, and due to the unique-nature of the stalk itself.

With mine, it has a mind of its own. Sometimes it goes into Park when stopped and I open the door, and sometimes it actually does not go into Park when stopped and I open the door (both times with the engine running). I can't figure out how it works considering I'm doing the same thing both times, but sometimes it engages. When I turn the car off, it always engages in Park, of course.

I haven't tried this with the car moving, thankfully.

Stick Girl

No problem! I likely would have figured it out sooner if I had RTFM, but of course there is no fun in that!

golfster

I had a similar curiosity as a kid. I wondered what would happen if I stuck a bobby pin in the electrical outlet. For days I wondered. Then one day, I climbed up on the bathroom counter and stuck the pin in as far as it would go. I realized the little experiment didn't go so well, as I picked myself up from the floor!!

Seriously, my '11 allows me to forward or aft slowly with the door open, like when pulling in the garage. Now I'm not sure if I am doing it correctly or incorrectly if it is allowing me to do what other E's won't do.

K-A

There's some kind of "loophole" around it, where if you do something or another, it won't go into Park when you open the door. I just can't figure what the hell I'm doing differently when it does go into Park, and when it doesn't (re: when I open the door while in gear, always stopped of course).

ColdCanuck

Seat belt on or off ??

The following snippet is for Distronic, but the logic might be the same

K-A

Hmm, I'm pretty sure always on, as I never take my seatbelt off, but that may very well be it! I'll pay attention.

Live Oak

If it went into Park with the seat belt OFF, I could go along with it. But mine dumps into Park with the car moving down the driveway, seat belt ON, and the driver door opened.

I suspect the MB lawyers got their undershorts all bunched up imagining some legal issue and forced this insane "feature."

Uh . . . do Teutons wear undershorts?

LILBENZ230

If you're using distronic and cruising down the highway when a system malfunction or undervoltage event occurs, it slams in park? That can't be right.

Live Oak

That's the whole point! We don't know, and nobody dares test it to find out!

The little arrows next to P, D and N on the dash display (as mentioned by somebody earlier) seem to suggest that those shift positions can be selected only if the arrows are showing. Those arrows disappear at about 6mph in my car, so all this supposition seems to make sense.

One can then assume that if one opens the door at 5.5 mph, the car will slam into Park, but at 6.1 mph, it won't???????? Nobody (except some engineer in Germany) seems to know for sure.

And one can also assume that if you exceed 6mph and accidentally poke the Park button, the car won't attempt to shift into Park and disassemble the transmission -- or at 70mph, for that matter????????

And that's the big problem!! This thing is so absolutely scary, and so badly (if at all) documented by Mercedes, that everybody is driving around not knowing what would happen if they bump P or R or open the door.

I've had people tell me, "OH! THEY WOULDN'T DO THAT!!!" But, nobody can prove it and nobody dares test it. And as a software developer I can tell you it would be an easy stupidity for Mercedes engineers to do. I am a firm believer that the phrase "It only makes sense" applies to almost nothing until it's tested.

(Granted, not a lot of MBZ owners seem to be thinking and worrying about it, and maybe that makes me a paranoid pedant. But just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean the car isn't out to get me.)

Arrie

I did accidentally hit the gear shifter once at 70 mph speed down to R but nothing happened. If I recall it correctly the car did not even go to neutral but for sure nothing bad happened.

YYZ-E55

6mph sounds about right. The park feature activates at 9km/h in my GL.

Arrie

Went to look at it again and yes, the car does shift to neutral but does not go to R when the small arrow disappears at around that 6 mph speed going forward.

Live Oak

AHA!!!! Somebody insane enough to test it!!

Thanks for letting us know.

Now, I'm going to run right out and do it myself!!

Actually, that's quite a bit encouraging -- if only Mercedes had written one sentence in the manual.

Now, a confession: In a brand new (1 week old) 1965 Chevelle Malibu SS with auto and the console shifter, at about 40 mph I wanted to go for 2 and hit R instead. Yes, it went to R, and took about 3,000 miles of the rear tires. ("It's push ~up~ for second, right?")

That was one car I should have kept in a garage somewhere.

Arrie

Me insane???

I did not test it. I did it accidentally. I drive a lot of rental cars and many of those have the wiper control right where we have the gear shifter. I was turning the wipers ON...

DC-IT

While I was driving on the highway I wanted to activate the wipers by pushing the stalk IN except in stead of the Left stalk I accidentally pushed the Right stalk!

The insrtument panel flashed a message to warned that you cannot put the transmission into "Park" when the vehicle is in motion!
So there is a built-in safe guard to prevent damage to the tranny!

BTW it's on my ML350BlueTec which I assume has the same tranny as the E350?

Live Oak

NOW WE'RE COOKING!!!!

CONFIRMATION that the machine won't let us do these stupid things! Shift to Reverse or shift to Park with the car up to speed. It's pretty easy, then, to imagine that the cutoff is the 6 mph speed where the funny little arrows disappear. Easy to assume, also, that the door-open = Park thing is supressed at 6 mph. ASSUMING that the E class is programmed like an ML350.

Thanks so much for telling us of your experience. I, personally, feel much more comfortable now.

The only question I now have is: with the 4,034+ pound machine traveling at 5.9 mph, will putting it in Park, by opening the door or punching the control, rip the Park pawl right out of the tranny? And will it tear up a driver who hasn't yet put his seat belt on and has his chin too close to the steering wheel, or a passenger who has a good run at the dash?