Ok so I’m posting this in case anyone has this problem in the future. My googling has not turned up a similar case. I’ll try to keep this short.

As I pulled away from a traffic light (flashing red due to storm), I got a ‘blind spot assist inop’ light. As I drove on, I got more and more warning lights. I pulled over after about a mile, turned the car off then on again, no more lights. Another half mile, more lights, warnings, transmission starts to act weird.

So I tried to restart again, it won’t turn off (keyless button). Time to go home. I drove about three miles to my house, it won’t go over 1000 rpm (traffic was heavy due to traffic lights out anyway). Turn signal inop. Pull into garage, it won’t shift to park, still won’t turn off.

I called Mercedes customer service, they told me to pop off the start button and put the key in. This stopped the motor. The car would not re-start. They sent a tow truck and took it to the nearest dealer.

That was almost two weeks ago. I went today to get something out of the car, and to my surprise they were able to drive it around to the front. It has not been looked at by the techs yet.

So here I am, very puzzled. I will post updates, and if anyone has an idea what is going on I’d like to hear it. My theory at the moment is that maybe a nearby lightning strike has fried the computers

About 90k. A similar post from 2014 popped up after I posted this that I was not able to find before.

I thought about low voltage too, but I believe there’s a backup battery in the back to enable the car to shift to park. Plus apparently it fired right up today. Still a possibility, of course.

I have the same year and car and hate these threads. ItslianJoe knows his stuff and I would say he nailed it.

Update-
Just got off the phone with the service advisor. The techs have investigated and the car is running fine. He did say they found some CAN faults (stored, I guess). He says they will try it again in the morning.

So far I’m only looking at an hour of labor but I’m going to be very uncomfortable with the car if they don’t find a definite problem.

I’ll do that. If they still don’t find anything I may check the connectors behind the instrument panel. Apparently that was the cause of the similar problem someone had with a GL.

Update. It seems the rear radar sensors are corroded. And shockingly, this isn’t the first time this has happened based on searching this problem (I did at one point get the “We’ve never seen this” speech).

According to my research MB has covered this problem out of warranty before. Hopefully they will again, but I wonder if having bought the car used will work against me.

Edit: I can’t seem to attach the picture of the estimate, but the sensors and harness are estimated at $2050.

You mean the sensors in the rear fenders for the blind spot assist?

Yes, my understanding is that they are the blind spot sensors.

Based on further research, the corrosion damage in the sensors can sometimes cause a short in the physical CAN bus, which disables a huge number of systems.

This forum post is extremely similar to what has happened to my car:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ben...=2911098&amp=1

Blind spot assist and all other systems seemed to be fine until this happened, though it apparently it’s more common for the sensors to fail without affecting the whole CAN system.

To me, this is beginning to look like it should be a recall. This is a design fault which leads to the sudden deactivation of numerous safety systems including ABS, pre-safe, ESP, etc. when the road is wet.

Well it’s happened twice for sure, and that’s just mine and another I found with some light googling.

I can’t see how the sudden disabling of ABS, ESP, pre-safe etc. is not a safety issue. I just looked at the video I took when I was trying to turn the car off and it also had an SRS malfunction warning.

Here’s a quote from an article about the recall process:

“ Basically if there is determined to be a defect to the vehicle, whether it’s due to a faulty part installed on the vehicle, or a poorly engineered design, and this defect can cause: a crash without warning, a fire, or a malfunction with one of the vehicle’s safety systems, it’s a candidate for a recall.”

The conditions which cause the sensors to corrode are not harmful to the rest of the car. They have a defect which makes them exceptionally vulnerable under normal circumstances.

Even if failing prematurely due to corrosion (probably because of trapped water) is not a ‘defect’, it’s still faulty design because this simple and common failure can disable most systems in the car, safety included.

Im going to ask the service rep to ask MB about covering this, and if that doesn’t work I’ll get in touch with Mercedes myself. Failing that I’ll be filing an NHTSA report.

Update- After sending me the estimate on Friday, the service rep hadn’t called by Monday so I called him and left a message. Several hours later I called again and he texted “Will call shortly” as the phone was ringing. Apparently ‘shortly’ doesn’t mean that day.

So so this morning I picked up the car and shelled out $175 for diagnosis. It’s not raining, so the drive home was fine. I pulled the fuse for the blind spot radar on the rear SAM (F59) for those scoring along at home. I plan to disconnect the radar harness when I figure out what location 5E is.

Mercedes USA has declined to fix this, but they did remind me that I’m not the original owner and offer a 10% discount on the dealer repair.

So, now it’s time to see what the NHTSA thinks about it. If you are reading this and your E-class has done this or something similar, please go to safercar.gov and file a report.