Ok I’ve done some quick searches and cannot find this but why are both my cars now screaming, “caution, traffic event ahead” every time I merge onto the interstate in my area. Yes they are doing construction in the area and have been for the last several years but only recently have both my MBs started doing this. I also cannot find a way to shut her up in the menu.
What little searching I’ve done, I think it has something to do with car to car communication but I didn’t think our ‘19 e class could do this.

 

FWIW, I've been getting these in my '19 C63S with COMAND 5.5 pretty much since I owned the car. If I remember correctly there is a setting under navigation to turn these off, but I left them on. I think the setting is called Traffic Announcements. I don't get it often, but if there is an unusual incident such as an accident or something ahead on the highway I'm driving on then I do get this announcement. I'm not sure if it's based on the Live Traffic data or the Car-to-X system that our cars do have and receive notifications from other Mercedes' on the road. It's kinda neat I think. I always have the map with live traffic on my center screen even if I'm not navigating, so I can get off the highway and use local routes when I see congestion ahead or get one of these announcements. Haven't gotten any of them for pretty much the last year given traffic was down due to the pandemic, but now that it's almost back to pre pandemic levels, I just got one the other day. The chaos on the roads is back, that's for sure.

 

I must have turned it on somehow but find it weird that both cars started doing it. I’ll look again. Thanks.

 

I don't mean to change the main topic, but does anyone know what the Nav system means when it says you are driving in a restricted area?

 

I like my car to scream "there is a traffic event ahead." It is so much more pleasant than when my wife screams "There is a traffic event ahead." Restricted area has happened a few times when in gated communities.

 

I get the restricted area message a lot, not just in gated communities. In fact, the dealership where I first test-drove one was in a restricted area lol. I don't have much use for any of the built-in nav systems. They just aren't as good as Waze or Google maps.

 

This restricted area message is really annoying. It's pretty much every commercial lot that I go to. Home Depot/Lowes/Mall/ You name it....

Is there any way to fix this?

 

My understanding about the restricted area is that's anything that has some kind of an access restriction. Things like time restrictions, private streets etc. Basically you won't be able to necessarily drive all the way to the final destination. Don't think that can be turned off. I don't get it very often as most places I navigate to are on public roads.

 

reading your post should allow you to fix the condtion. one would hope.

 

What you said there is how I think the system works, between M-B vehicles.

Driving in the Big City today, I received a couple of "alerts," or that's what we thought they were. Chirp sounds that we hadn't heard before.
First time sounds in the 53 with the two Nannie packages.

Then I noticed on the MBUX screen, far right where it shows a "Me" icon, sos and signal strength, there was an icon I hadn't noticed before. It was a picture of a car with a location pin atop it, but not lit up. My first thought was that this was Car-to-X, but other M-B's were out of range.
My second thought was that the icon was always there but I hadn't noticed it.

All of which makes me wander what my two Chirps were.

 

I haven’t had any notices this year but in the past, (GLE 450) using the Native Mercedes Nav there have been notices and rerouting from the “Live Traffic” function. It also calculated delay times. A few were accurate, some not or outdated. There was also a backtrack function that lined out a return route after leaving home for a shopping trip. The backtrack appeared without using Nav.
My GLE 53 doesn’t seem to work the same but I haven’t used native Nav.

 

That icon should have always been there. It indicates that your location tracking is active and the car reports its location to Mercedes Me so you or law enforcement can track its whereabouts. You can track it via the Mercedes Me app and law enforcement gets access if your car is stolen and you call Mercedes to help recover it.

 

It seems that I have seen that icon lit up, instead of greyed out on my recent observation. I think the "lit up" was on an E-Class loaner, not the current car, though.

None of this explains the Chirps I heard in the Big City, though.

 

Yes, it seems that the Live Traffic is more aggressive in re-routing due to traffic, than the Command before. I ended up ignoring (disabling) the re-route on the Command (MBUX seems to know more quickly when incidents have cleared).
Neither does the egregious re-routing that WAZE does, which never seems to recognize when the re-routing has resulted in more delays and congestion than just waiting for the incident to clear.

I thought the Backtrack function was for off-road excursions - it initially appeared on ML's with off-road packages. It tracks steering wheel angle and counts tire rotations. I hadn't thought of it as a NAV substitute. I tried it once on a Forest Service trail and it wanted to put me in some awkward situations. Back to the Topo's! (Forest Service maps are not all that accurate....)

 

@nsoltz I appreciate this input. I can now tell my wife it’s not just my driving (others do it too) or her telling me I don’t have blue lights on top anymore.

 

I found a few settings were changed after the OTA update that I got last week (folding mirrors in my case). Maybe that’s why???