Distronic stopping distance
 

I noticed that distronic will come right up on a stopped car in front of you at a light and then almost slamming on the brakes. I have it set to farthest distance but it still seems to come unsettlingly close to a car in front if they are stopped at a light. Anyone else notice this?

Yup.... Unless it is following the car ahead of you, it will treat it like a brick wall. Do not rely on it stopping at all for stopped traffic way ahead of you. Basically it has no way of knowing its a vehicle ahead of you. If you are within several car lengths and the vehicle ahead of you is moving also, even in crawling, it works. Not Stopped Traffic :(

I always have to brake for distronic when the car ahead of me is in the distance.

In stop and go traffic the Distronic is far smoother accelerating/stopping than I am so I let it do it's thing less complaints from Co-pilot.
It stops from speed reliably but its nerve wracking using it when you are going 80 MPH and the traffic ahead is all stopped. Distronic doesn't start stopping until the last available second to stop just in time.
Unnerves the copilot who doesn't know whether Distronic is on or not or whether I'm aware. Tried it couple times works but got the lecture.

That's not what it's meant to do. Distronic is for pacing moving vehicles in front of you. It can't tell the difference between a parked car that's off the road in front of you vs one that's on the road. In other words if you come up on a curve in the road but straight ahead is a parked car in a driveway it would try to slow down and pace the parked car. You are expecting the system to do something it wasn't designed to do.

My experience is the opposite Works much better in freeway traffic than stop and go. Unless you're in a 25 MPH zone, 35MPH and up it waits till the last minute to break.

Whereas on the expressway, it is much more gradually. Find myself not using it much in stop and go traffic; especially with all the stop lights and stop signs. It could drag you through a stop light if the car in front of you is gunning it on the yellow....too dangerous.

I have been using radar based cruise controls for many years now, first with Lexus and now with MB. The current Distronic Plus is the best of them all, but it certainly requires the attention and supervision of the driver. I think of it as another set of eyes, watching the car in front of me, should I glance away for one reason or another. After working with the system for some time, you get to know when it is best to intervene with the brakes, rather than let the system accelerate towards a slowing or stopped vehicle, only to then jam on the brakes. And they want to give us driverless cars and huge trucks. Yeah, right!

I totally agree, yet MB promotional videos show it coming right up to a fixed object and stopping. In real life, this doesn't seem to be the case.

Also, if you have someone entering the interstate via an on-ramp, it doesn't see the car to your right and you will have intervene (either speed up or interrupt the cruise) to allow the entering car to get into a lane.

Better yet, get your adrenalin going at a toll booth... Ya slow down to a stop, creep along, then when the car ahead is free to go, hold on..... :)

I had driven a G Series 7 bmw ( I deliberately type this in small letters ;) ) with a distronic and it also acted like your S Class . I think designers must be doing this by design .The car seemed like it noticed the car too late applied on panic brakes at last minute ,it was a little late than what I would do but sales guy asked me to not brake though