I'm taking delivery of a GLE450 next week and I took the car for a test drive today. I'm a bit confused about the functioning of the Active Lane Keeping Assist function. My wife has a 2019 VW Tiguan and the active lane keeping assist on that car is always on and pushes the car back into the lane if she attempts to change lanes without the indicator. The function on the GLE only seemed to work when the cruise control was on and without it, I was able to bounce back and forth across several lanes with no intervention from the vehicle. Am I missing something here? Shouldn't that feature be always engaged? It makes no sense for it to only function when the cruise control in on.

 

You might want to make sure that the Active Lane Keeping function is turned on. Mine works ALL of the time.

 

+1

 

There is an off/on but the function doesn’t work like most competitors to steer you back into the lane. Instead some genius decided to have it aply the brakes even though with Distronic it guides you back into the lane. The braking correction could be hazardous on an icy road and is too harsh at higher speeds. I leave mine turned off.

 

You can set the sensitivity of it and have had no issues with it on my car.

 

Yes, I did notice that its a very different approach from the two other vehicles in our household, a 2019 Tiguan and a 2010 Hyundai Tucson. They both gently guide you back into the center of the lane, the Hyundai has an annoying beep also. Thank you for the responses, I'm just making sure I didn't miss turning something on... I will likely just turn it off also.

 

How do you set the sensitivity? I sat in a parking lot a few days ago, while my wife was shopping, going through menus and sub menus and could not find anything other than the ability to turn it on an off. I would really like to make it less aggressive.

 

Not sure if it is different in US but in UK MENU - SETTINGS - ASSISTANCE -ACTIVE LANE KEEPING ASSIST , you get the following:

 

The active lane keeping assist feature, according to my owner's manual, can differential between "sporty driving" and "distracted driving" when crossing the center line. If you start to veer to the edge of the road, and the car can sense the edge of the road, it will brake the opposite side to veer you back into the lane. The same if you get to close to the center line. However, if you are driving sportly on a twisty road, supposedly it can sense it and will allow you to cross the center line in that case. As with anything built by man, your results will vary. That said, the feature works well on mine and I leave it on. The vast majority of the time it only "actively" assists if I'm too close to the edge. In other cases, sometimes it only vibrates the steering (3 short pulses) if I'm getting close to the center line divide, rather than actively brake me back into the center lane. The active steering assist, (where the car steers itself to keep centered in the lane vice using differential braking) only works with the driver's assist package when the cruise control is on and set.

 

Mine constantly gets confused with solid lines and dashed lines. Pulling back into the lane and the system suddenly braking is certainly frustrating to following traffic.
I now keep it switched off. It introduces more risks than it mitigates.

 

Mercedes has two distinct active steering systems. The first is Lane Keep Assist and the second is Active Steering Assist. They have distinct functions and can individually be turned on/off. The Lane Keep Assist is purely a last resort system that will intervene if you start drifting into another lane. As correctly stated above, it can generally distinguish between distracted drifting or sporty/dynamic driving. For example when I go canyon carving with my C63S it never intervenes if I cross the center lines, but if I drift on the highway for example it intervenes. The system is designed to wake you up if you start drifting by first vibrating the steering wheel, then alert and last but not least jolt you back into your lane using braking action.

Active Steering Assist on the other hand is true automated steering ala Tesla Autopilot and other semi-autonomous systems. It actively keeps you in the lane and steers the car around bends etc. as well as evades other cars that might be encroaching on you. It can also automatically perform lane changes, but it's only designed to work in conjunction with DISTRONIC. It's not an always on system that steers you back into your lane. That's the drivers job unless they have DISTRONIC active, but as a safety net Lane Keep Assist is there to prevent the car from drifting into another lane if the driver is not paying attention.

Some compeitor systems muddle the lines between true self-steering and lane keep by giving the false impression that their lane keep assist is actually self-steering. The difference between the two is that Lane Keep Assist exclusives watches the lane markers, where as true auto steering like Tesla AutoPilot and MB Active Steering Assist monitors the traffic and other cars around you in additional to the lane markings and can also use dividers etc. to active steer the car in its lane and evade other cars.

 

My GLE 450 Lane Keep did not differentiate sporty driving that I could tell. There is section of mountain road that has a lot of curves (that I drive frequently at speed) and at speed it corrected before the early warning if I crossed a center line intentionally. At 70+ mph there is only a fraction of a second between approach and the crossing event. Crossing a Center line Always got harsh braking alarming passengers. It worked terrible at first even braking for shadows from a power line once. It was much improved after an update recalibrating the Camera. As far as I know there have no additional updates after I got the one making it possible to turn it off until turned back on-rather than reset with each ignition cycle.
As I’ve said repeatedly, the braking correction is a terrible idea that should never have made it into production.

 

My active steering assist works quite well when it's available, but it seems it's never available during the daytime, even on open highways with clear lane markings. When it gets darker around 6pm, it seems to become available in conjunction with distronic. I know there are various factors that determine when it's available (e.g. glare?), but is it normal that it's basically never available before dusk? Taking my car for A service next week and might mention this.

 

If I understand, your distronic active steering (auto steering) doesn’t work at dusk, or are you referring to lane keeping assist (differental braking)? Either way, that does NOT sound normal, you probably need the cameras to be recalibrated.

 

No, that's not normal at all. I've never had issues with it not being available other than for brief moments when the lane markings disappeared or the cameras were blinded. That usually only happens if there is little traffic, because if there are other cars around it doesn't have to see the lane markers necessarily and instead uses the other cars as a guide. Your calibration maybe off.