My car is frequently throwing-up error messages. Distronic, Park Assist and other things. These are false positives as the features are working. My massage seats are similary erratic.
Anyone know what might be causing this?

 

Check the state of your battery and the cables.

If you're unsure, try trickle charging it for 48 hours or so.

 

many of the faults are what you should expect with a Mercedes outside the 3 year warranty period, for example the modules in the seat need to be replaced (software updates doesn't fix the worn out hardware or the cracked pipes)

then there's a very long thread on why you get these Park Assist warnings.... they are NOT fake, but they are in many ways unhelpful. And there is NOTHING you can do about it (aside from manually turning them off and them smashing up the car when you park...) other car manufacturers chose to use systems that argue with the ones on your S class and because you car is getting what it believes are invalid or what could easily be missed vehicles, the safety system turns off to stop giving incorrect information to the driver. However to ensue you know the system is off and to stop litigation (as you may now smash your car up), it must make it very obvious with audible and visual warnings to say the 5K dollar prang you are just about to have is not Mercedes problem.

Cheap radar speed detectors are also a huge load of noise the car can pick up and get confused over. Alongside Jaguar, Land Rover, Ford, Nissan who are a few of the common systems that throw a Mercedes S class in a tailspin.... And if you read the owners manual, the SAT NAV mapping can also turn off the Distronic plus and or you MUST do it manual in the cluster display, when you are near certain military establishments. It appears cruise and intercontinental ballistic missiles don't like your cruise controls radar.

And the reason this pops up in USA forums and not many European ones is because the USA sensibly allows overtaking on either side on a multilane highway. This should give better driving as you need to be awake and aware of what's going on - but sadly it doesn't happen and driving appears worse. So to reduce the carnage, the USA market has a much higher prevalence of the Volvo invented BLIS system (BLIS - blind spot assistance). Unfortunately all these disparate systems and mixed technologies mean its all too common to have confusing signals bouncing between cars. Which brings the irritation of frequent warnings as the system is disabled on and off. This issue is far bigger than in Europe, where its illegal to undertake and BLIS is fitted on far less than 1 in 40 vehicles

 

My 2007 S600 with Park Assist didn't come with the ICBM Launch control you mention. I'd like to add that.

 

no but you may have caused it to miss its target and land in your back garden instead....

I've had mine switch off near sensitive military facilities

 

The radar-based features are turned off to ensure compliance when travelling through areas designated as a National Radio Quiet Zone. I noticed this in particular when driving through portions of Maryland and Virginia - no cell service, no radio stations, and DISTRONIC PLUS not available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United...dio_Quiet_Zone