The Chocolate Fireguard as designed by Mercedes Benz

" setting the heater controls to direct the hot air to the screen turns on the air conditioning, thus directing colder air than otherwise "

Astounded by this 'feature' - how do you ever get warm air then?

When the engine is nice and warm, using aircon with heat fully up gives air which is not as warm as it would have been, but still warm, and as Neil says it is great for shifting condensation on the inside. On a cold morning in the Welsh mountains, I've had my breath freezing on the inside of the windows, you want the air as hot as possible then. If you turn the air control to just before the 'all on screen' setting, it doesn't trigger the aircon, but it's something else to remember, and not intuitive

My 10 year old car turns the Aircon on with the heater when I direct the air to the screen, according to the manual this dries the moisture and clears the inside very quickly and in my view it works, its still hot air but dryer.

Martin P

It's comforting to know that LR is still maintaining it's core of traditional faults even after a change of owner. Thirty years on and still supplying earth faults to the masses.

There are some unadvertised benefits, like my old bosses Audi A3 12 or 13 plate without the Sat Nav option. Four of us went out on a trip with 3 sat Navs from different makers, none would acquire a satellite in the vehicle until you turned the ignition off or stood about 6 feet from the car. Not tried in a second A3 so can't comment further except Audi said there was nothing wrong with it.

Reading this I am so happy to have a 25year old car with none of this technology, it is controlled by me. If something happens it is down to me.

I think many people will blame the car when something goes wrong or something happens instead of down to them for not being in control

Since everyone seems to be having a moan. Can I complain about the ever increasing number of complete arseholes that don't use their handbrake when stopped at junctions and traffic lights, but keep their foot on the brake pedal. Thereby shining their head-level brake lights into my face!

Aaah, they must be the ones who haven't read the Highway Code then.

Highway code, what's that? Oh yes, the book you study to pass your test then throw in the bin and forget.

Rather than having all these driving aids they should just play an audio book version of the code while the ignition is on.

I'm thinking of a package of similar electronic aids for some of my machines, might be worth developing and marketing. The basis for them is a recorded voice triggered three seconds after engaging the machine drive which says " I wouldn't do it like that if I were you"

In a similar vein a recording of my wife's voice saying "are you sure that's safe?" Would come on if using any face plate set up.

This thread could be summarised as "it's not like it was in my day"

Probably, like me, they have a car with an automatic brake that applies itself in creeping traffic and automatically releases when you touch the accelerator. They probably don't even know that the brake lights are on when they use this function. If it's any consolation , I don't use mine at night.

Rod

Maybe I am too cynical, but am not sure that all these "assist" functions do improve road safety, since they discourage drivers from being aware of what is going on around them and thinking.

"The car will take care of that for me"

Like the one parked on the roof of the following one in the middle of a five car pile up in the fast lane of the M6?

Or the Merecedes that ploughed, at great speed, into the column of slow moving traffic ahead of it, shown recently on TV? He claimed that his brakes failed,

So did his eyes, by the look of the film! If he had been looking far enough ahead for his speed, he could have lifted off, possibly changed down and applied the parking brake to slow.

NO, that would have implied thought about what he was doing!

Twice, I have been nearly run off the road, by a driver who forgot that he was alongside another vehicle, and decided to change lanes!

I'm prejudiced, having passed a driving test where you had to halt a vehicle with an unsynchronised gear box using hand brake and gears!

Howard

Tesla gave an interesting talk on their progress with autonomy a few days ago: (Skip the first hour of advertising) - It;s a long presentation.

I found their explanation of AI quite facsinating (starts about 1 hr 52 mins in)

Progress is a slow road in many things. particularly when the advertising and finance guys claim and demand promises with fudged wording to con the buyer. But do any of us really want to go back to hand cranking their cars, flooding it with manual choke and hammering on the B pillar to get that damned indicator arrow to come out?

The most annoyign aspect of auto headlights is when driving on Welsh roads at night with tight bends and the car sees the reflection off the chevrons and dips the headlights just when you need them most. ' cos it thinks its an oncoming car.

**LINK**

I was taught to take the car out of gear and apply the hand brake if stationary for more than a few seconds, and regards it as sloppy and inconsiderate driving to hold the car on the footbrake. However you do see it quite a lot, particularly with young drivers. Maybe something to do with the way they are now taught? Another issue is that some modern cars (like my latest) have an “auto hold” or “hold assist” feature which keeps the brakes applied hydraulically when the car is braked to a stop, so no need to apply the parking brake in temporary stopping situations (these cars generally don’t have a conventional manual hand brake). The consequence is that the brake lights stay on, even though the driver does not have his foot on the brake. When I discovered this I found that I could over-ride the Autohold by applying the Electronic Parking Brake, thereby turning the lights off. Interestingly, from threads on motoring forums I belong to, quite a few users aren’t aware that Autohold leaves their brake lights on. This ought to be made clear in the Manual for the car, but it isn’t. I have it on good authority that the salesmen at some main dealers don’t know about this either.

I’m not sure Mercedes is a particularly good choice these days, well not if you want reliability.

**LINK**

The intelligent use of rear fog lights would be nice, if you can see the car behind you he can see you, there is no need to constantly dazzle them with your fog lights, they have a switch to turn them on and of as required, even better would be a sensor to turn them off when a vehicle is behind with lights on. Fog lights in rain are just to make life even more unpleasant for anyone behind. THINK

Mike

"even better would be a sensor to turn them off when a vehicle is behind with lights on. "

Yep, and he is so close his LED lasers are blinding you. Just like F1, driving is a dying art. Get rid of ALL the gizmos and make the driver think. Too many budding Hamblbums don't realise there aint no reset button in a car.

Regards Ian.

No, not a luddite but I don't need a light on the dash to tell me when to change gear.

Edited By Steve Neighbour on 27/04/2019 11:04:48

I have to disagree (tempting fate maybe) I'm on my 2nd Mercedes (No 1 was a C class estate) I now have a E class estate and it is nothing less than superb, it it by far the best car I have driven, it is very economical, easily achieving 50+ mpg, (the best I have managed is 62.7 )

My local MB dealers service is second to none, and always go that extra mile to ensure I'm a 'happy customer' - maybe I'm just lucky, but for me (at the moment) there is no other car I would consider !!

I used to think that front fog lights were lower down than the legal minimum for headlights and so using them when it's not foggy was illegal. Nowadays lots of cars turn on the appropriate fog light when turning a corner. I find this distracting when an oncoming car for some reason turns a light on and off. If using low mounted fog lights is illegal, then shouldn't the manufacturers be told to sort it out, or are our politicians completely powerless? On one of my cars if you turned the ignition off then the fog lights went off and didn't come back on next time the ignition came on, so the driver had to make a conscious decision to turn them on every time, seems sensible to me

see **LINK** clause 27