I have a bug in my car that has been occurring for some time that I can't seem to fix. Everyday I get an audible notice "traffic event ahead" at least twice during the drive- it's fairly loud and intrusive and the navi includes a large red dot on the roadway ahead.. They are always in the same spots during my commute and no, there is never a traffic event. It doesn't matter what time of day they still come up in the same spots. I have shut off everything I can think of- traffic alerts, audible instructions, you name it- I can't find any other feature to shut off. My co-worker has a 2020 E53 and has the same thing (not sure if they are at the same spots). I wasn't going to schedule an appointment for something so minor so I was hoping someone else had success in fixing this.

 

Sounds like Car-to-X is malfunctioning or for some reason another vehicle is constantly reporting that spot as an accident site.
Not the suggestion you might like but is there another route you can take?

 

I’ve noticed that on mine a couple of times on the freeway. Never an event....??

 

It's an event that hasn't been cleared. I have one on a stretch that I drive almost daily. There was an actual event there a little while ago, and it hasn't cleared for for some reason. Most of the time these announcement are quite accurate, informing me about congestion or other events up ahead. I believe they can be turned off in the settings. I think the setting is called traffic announcements or something like that.

 

I have that set to off and still receive them.

 

Try calling their 800 number they seem to be pretty good at fixing little stupid things like this. They get the traffic I think from XM, it is a long way off from Waze for sure but I have had it work for me a few times pretty well. I called when my steering wheel and seats wouldn't push back even though it was set to do that and they helped me troubleshoot all the way up to bring in the car for a service call

 

SiriusXM traffic is only for the older models. The latest COMAND system uses TomTom for live traffic and more recently they've moved to HERE Traffic for both COMAND NTG 5.5 and MBUX. I'm not sure who all has been migrated to HERE traffic yet, but there's a thread in the W213 section about how the TomTom live traffic subscription can no longer be renewed, and several owners have been w/o live traffic. I had some live traffic issues earlier this year that took several weeks to be resolved, and I suspect I got migrated to HERE traffic and there was a hiccup with the migration.

 

Hmmm, I see then who is the provider for Car-to-X? Actually, better question since Car-to-X is a communication standard, who is the maintainer and who provides data to MB's version of Car to X, I believe I heard that MB's Car to X only communicates to MBs but I love to be wrong in regards to this.

 

Car-to-X doesn't have a provider per se. Car-to-X is a concept and a way to describe communication between vehicles and the infrastructure. What data ultimately gets communicated and exchanged is a different story. Today, most of this is a silo. For MB, the data comes from their cars on the road. There are efforts going on at the moment to standardize Car-to-X, so that cars from different manufacturers can exchange data with each other. There will also need to be standardization in specific infrastructure technology to exchange information with cars. For example the traffic light information that Audi has pioneered is now expanding to other car manufacturers. So there are pieces that will have providers, and there will be companies specializing in different areas to provide services as part of the greater Car-to-X vision, but Car-to-X is more like the Internet. What services you ultimately gonna run on top is another question. In Europe for example there's a standard now for Emergency vehicles to broadcast their presence, so that cars ahead get warnings and can inform the drivers to pull to the side in order to form a path for the emergency vehicle to get through. MB cars exchange weather and traffic information. For example when the wipers turn on automatically the cars report to the cloud that it is raining, so other cars can factor in actual weather conditions. Similarly if ESP triggers due to slippery road conditions this information is exchanged with the cloud to alert other drivers in the area about the slippery conditions. Not clear how much of this is even working in the different markets yet. Supposedly Car-to-X is leveraged by HERE to crowd-source traffic data similarly to Google and since Audi and BMW together with Daimler own HERE, and all three are using HERE services more and more, traffic data should benefit from all these BMW, MB and Audi cars on the road gathering real time traffic data. In this case the provider would be HERE, getting data reported from the different vehicles.

 

Thanks for your detailed explanation as always : ) That more than answers my question and the examples made it clear.

 

What year did they cut over from XM to the newer system?

 

With the FL when NTG5.5 was fitted.

 

A couple of years ago I had one of these events that were not cleared from Comand. It was about a highway tunnel being closed because of some maintenance. Obviously annoying when Comand kept avoiding our main highway for route guidance.

It was (perhaps still is) a bug in the pre-facelift Comand. There was no way to clear the event from the event list. Even a full reset from the Comand menu did not help (but you lose all personal info and settings). The only solution was to update SW at the dealer. Cannot remember if the update was for the same SW release but at least the SW update process cleared the event memory.

Our traffic info provider was aware of this Mercedes issue but our dealer was not. The dealer anyway followed the instructions I got to fix the car.

 

You gave me an idea. I reset live traffic and I'll see if that cleared the stuck event next time I drive through there. If anyone else wants to try it, here's what I did.

1. Turn on ignition and wait for traffic to show up on the map
2. Deactivate the live traffic service in the Mercedes me connect app. Takes a bit of time until it's deactivated
3. Restart COMAND, and verify that traffic is no longer active. It'll display a message saying so
4. Reactivate the live traffic service in the Mercedes me connect app. Again, takes a bit of time before it reactivates
5. Restart COMAND again, and verify that traffic is showing up again.

I'll report back if it cleared the event.

 

What is FL and NTG5.5? sorry I am still a newbie when it comes to Mercedes Lingo. I have 16' and was pretty sure that was XM but when I cancelled XM after the free time I still have traffic so I assume I am off XM which explains that.

 

FL is facelift as in the midcycle refresh of the model. PFL would be pre-facelift. NTG is the internal name for COMAND/MBUX. Stands for New Telematics Generation. 5.5 is the latest version that still used the COMAND name. MBUX is NTG6.0.

Here's a history of the different versions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comand_APS

 

Following up on my own post. The errand traffic event seems to have cleared for me. Not sure how much the reset had to do with it. I did get it again shortly after I did the reset, but I drove through there today, and it was gone and instead it properly announced a traffic jam a few miles further down the road.

 

I have also gotten these “phantom” Traffic event ahead warnings since the middle of 2021. I called the 800 number and they recommended the SW update. I spent 4 hours at the dealership waiting for a simple SW download but it took much longer that anyone expected. But, the new SW Did Not Fix the problem. I get these regularly even with the damn Traffic Alerts turned off. I replied to the email from MB and let them know that the problem was not fixed and that I thought that the issue must lie within their system. Got no response! Apparently they’re either unable or unwilling to fix this. Just got lip service and no action. The “best or nothing “ my butt.

 

Looks like they gave you the "nothing" option of that "best or nothing" choice.

 

Unless MB is REALLY going to live up to this Karl Benz quote they’re just like every other car manufacturer and delivering the bare minimum that they can get away with. It’s fun to just say whatever you want in advertising and get away with it, but Karl is probably spinning in his grave.