2020

I recently switched from an Alfa Romeo with adaptive cruise control to the new E class. Most of my driving is bumper to bumper during rush hour. I've become hooked on adaptive cruise control and semi-autonomous driving. I've noticed on the Alfa and suprisingly on the Mercedes that if a car cuts in front you and is half way in your lane these cars do not sense them easily. This morning I got to about a foot away from the car in front of me before I had to stomp on the brake manually. You would think at this point these would be able to sense a large object in front of them. Makes me think of the unfortunate death caused by the Uber self driving car. I guess it is still a work in progress.

W213Sal

Drive Pilot is a driver assistance function not a self driving mode. The car has short, long, mix mode radar, and two stereo cameras up the front so you can bet it saw the car coming, as to why it didn't react, I don't know, I guess the car doesn't know how to tell apart a$$hole drivers from non-a$$hole drivers, so it didn't brake, and probably isn't programmed to do it in such situations, drive pilot is by far the most technologically advanced driving assistance system on the market today, it's leaps and bounds ahead of tesla's 12 ultrasonic sensors (lol).

2020

If it "saw the car coming" then what good is the system. The first priority is safety. If it cannot react to a large object in front of you then it is worthless. I really don't care if it can self drive on the highway, change lanes, self park, etc but cannot react to a potentially dangerous situation. If these systems don't address this, then society in general will be leary of approving self driving cars from using our public roadways.

ua549

So what is your spacing setting? The short setting is very short while the longest setting is what most people would consider normal. I've experimented with this using a child's punching toy as the obstacle. On the shortest setting there was only a few inches remained between the obstacle and the car when it stopped with full braking. I would never use that setting out of concern of following vehicles. I use the longest setting which leaves about 15 feet between the obstacle and the car using more moderate braking. I suggest that everyone experiment these safety settings so they will not be surprised by the results.

Egonvdv

It seems that the feature is not perfect ON PURPOSE.
because it's not working 100pct perfectly, it forces you to remain vigilant at all times,
so no risk of you falling asleep

alexanderfoti

As per others, I have experience with the distronic system on a 215, and distronic plus on both a 221 and a facelift 204. They all behave the same.

They often fail to react when a car cuts in front of another car, or take a long time to react when a car moves out of your lane. The 221 has short and long range radar, which replace the parking sensors, and seems to be a bit better in very slow traffic than the 204.

gfmohn

I believe that I recall a commenter in the C-Class (W205) forum describing a nasty scare from the opposite problem. The car in front of him turned off the road, thereby revealing the car in front of him. The newly revealed car was stopped! It seems that for the Distronic+ system to recognize an object as a stopped vehicle, it has to have been tracking the object while it was still moving. Makes sense -- otherwise, it would react to every tree and fence post on a curve. But, face it, a lot of human drivers have been caught out in that situation.

kingscorpian27