German Car Zone

This just seems like another waste of R&D money. This kind of tech just results in higher prices, and a feature that 99.9% of buyers will not care about.

Oh great. Another gimmick. Another gimmick that will not only add to the complication to the operations of the vehicle, but adds weight, expense and is surely to be followed by a load of haywired electronics.

^the times of MB doing dodgy tech are over..so dont worry..
And about the weight..in the cars who get this i dont think weight is that important..
I also dont think this will add more than 50kg.. no way..
And about the fears ppl are having of it taking control from you..
im pretty darn sure that its very passive until needed.. Like the Break Assist..
Or you might even be able to turn it off..

Driving a car in some years will be a real pain in the @$$... Where is the freedom to drive, if the car spied you like that? For everything?

Who is the driver? It is a question that will be worth asking in few years. What if an accident is caused by the failure of one of these useless and stupid electronic garbage equipment?

"It's not my fault, my car didn't tell me there was a car in front of me/ didn't brake to avoid the crash/did not look in the mirror for me/did not told me I was tired/did not saw the pedestrian for me/did not display the speed-limit sign for me/did not slow down at my place/did not forbid me to drive because I drank some alcohol 3 days ago/did not turn the lights and windshields-wipers on for me..."

It's becoming ridiculous. I don't want my car to spy me like that.

Hilarious.

M

It is possible ...but statistically, far less fallible than a human being behind the wheel.

So much hate.

Well I think we can all agree if Mercedes didn't introduce all these new tech features in their cars we would have run-of-the-mill Toyota's looking more advanced. Eventually...

This is technology for the sake of bullet-points in a brochure. All of these new nanny-tech systems do nothing but drive you crazy and/or malfunction.

Have any of you ever driven with Volvo BLISS, or Infiniti's lane departure system? They're retarded. "Hey there's a guy in your blind spot - I'm going to shine a light at you." "Hey you're not in your lane, so I'm shaking the steering wheel and beeping at you."

I read a write-up on the Lexus LS600h a few months ago, and the writer complained about an incident where the LS's active safety system was accidentally triggered by some beams and scaffolding as they drove towards an overpass that was under construction. The car slammed on the brakes, scared the living shit of everybody and nearly caused an accident.

So... when I read about this "Driver Attention (or DA)" system that Mercedes is developing I can only think the worst. For starters - What they're promising is something cars can't do. Ok, I hear you - "Well, that's why they're developing it!"

Thing is, most of us have a general understanding of what engineers are and aren't able to achieve with onboard electronics - what DA is promising to accomplish here is waaaayyyy beyond what can be considered a reasonable goal for a car in the year 2008. I'd even have a hard time buying into this concept if I was told that it was being developed by DARPA.

Here's how I see it - Luxury automakers have been drifting towards "the omniscient car" as a marketing story as the barriers that used to separate luxury cars from the pack start to fade. So Mercedes, BMW and the rest are busy at work working on:
1 - Advanced Telematics (Like iDrive, MMI, COMMAND)
and
2 - Spacial Intelligence

#1 used to be a real novelty - Just as recently as 2002, iDrive was something of a technological wonder to behold. But now, with every Toyota, Honda, Mazda and Ford featuring available telematics/navigation/phone systems the wow factor is wearing off.

#2 is just a problem. Examples of "Spacial Intelligence" systems are Adaptive Cruise Control, Pedestrian Recognition, Smart Parking (like the Lexus LS) and Lane Departure Avoidance.

For the most part, these technologies are expensive to develop and even more expensive to implement effectively. They also have the potential to be very dangerous either by malfunction, or by dulling the attentiveness of drivers.

More importantly, I'm convinced that consumers really don't care about these intelligent systems. "So what does this E-Class have that I don't get out of my A6?" "Well sir... it's able to monitor your body language and suggests that you stop and get an espresso when you're drowsy. It also might just do it's own thing to save your ass if you get really tired."

To date, I have yet to come across somebody who is a passionate advocate of systems like BLISS or BMW Night Vision. If any of you come across anecdotal stories on the internet like "My Acura RL saved my life" I'd love to hear it

I'm new here so I beg your forgiveness if my comments offend people. I am not old but my opinions seem old. And odd, too, as I am a technophile. I really love tech. I waste an inordinate amount of pocket money on gadgetry. But I prefer tech that enhances responsibility and alertness, not tech that encourages dependence, reliance and eventual lowered alertness and responsibility.

As such, I prefer structural or passive ''engineered-in'' safety features that save drivers and passengers in moments when they really can't do anything. Like seatbelts to hold you back when someone rams you or you careen off the road. Crumple zones designed into the body structure to absorb the kinetic energy of collision so its not transmitted to you. ABS to preserve traction when you - without realizing it - drive over a patch of oil, sand, gravel etc.

However, any gadgetry that takes away (in the guise of ''assisting'') your primary responsibility to drive well, drive responsibly, drive reasonably, and monitor your own alertness and attention level, is to me a very bad idea. Gadgets that tell you you are nodding off to sleep, gadgets that beeps when you swerve between lanes, etc etc When would the line be drawn in the trend of machinery taking more and more of your primary responsibility as a good, safe, reasonable driver and road-user? What happens when they malfunction? You sue the manufacturer? It creates a dependency that can turn fatal when you switch to a car without such a gadget. When the lane departure gadget does not beep, does that mean you are NOT therefore deviating from the lane? What happens when you begin to COUNT on the gadget in the car seat to zap you with electric shock when the car realizes you are falling asleep? WHat happens if the car does not zap you?

I get the feeling that car manufacturers are trying to cramp as much computing gadgetry into cars as they can to create novelty and saleability, in a ceaseless technical one-upmanship, heedless of what is beneficial for humans. And also heedless of the potential legal liabilities they assume on their own heads.