Hints from the release this week of the 2014 Mercedes S-Class suggest that it doesn't have the promised traffic jam assist. Update: Other reports suggest it might still be present.

The S-class only gets major updates infrequently, though an intermediate update will come in 2017. A story on Auto Express quotes Mercedes as saying "We can do it now, but there are rules in place that we have to accept" but that a fully autonomous car will come before the next full-revision of the S class due in 2021.

Instead, this car features a lanekeep + ACC mode that requires your hand be "touching" the wheel, and starts complaining if you take your hands off for a while.

This is a setback on what was to be the first commercially released car. While the various state laws do not tend to cover cars that provide an autopilot that requires constant visual attention from the driver, Mercedes may have been afraid of the regulatory environment in the Europe.

In addition, there has always been a special risk to this approach. Even if you insist to the driver that they must pay attention, they will surely ignore that warning once they get away with occasional inattention -- after all, they will send text messages now with no auto-driving at all. Car companies can build a lane-keeping car today, but to stop you from trusting it too much they end up with systems like "keep touching the wheel" or a gaze detector that makes sure you keep watching the road, and people don't like these systems very much.

Will Volvo and Audi, who have also announced plans for lakekeep+ACC super-cruise cars also pull back? Cadillac, which actually uses the name super-cruise, has pulled back from their 2015 date while at the same time talking to the press about their testing program.

Senate Hearings

In other news, the hearings in the Senate yesterday had most of their focus on these early technologies, and as expected, both David Strickland of NHTSA and the various industry folks were gung-ho on DSRC for V2V and very eager to recommend that the FCC not be allowed to convert the DSRC spectrum to unlicenced as it wishes to do. Here is a summary of the meeting which was attended by only a few senators. Both Johnson and Rockefeller surprised me with their skill in the questions. While Johnson was not up on all the ADAS technologies, he was able to see through a number of the industry claims.