One of the first night vision systems available on a
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production vehicle is Mercedes-Benz's Night View Assist, fitted to the range-topping S-Class passenger car as a £1,194 option, but now available down to the new medium-sector E-Class.
As is Merc's way, we can expect the technology to move across to the Actros range at some point in the medium future. Never afraid to suffer a little hardship in your interest, we tried out an S500 to assess the system in action.
The road is illuminated by a pair of infra-red lamps, unseen by human eyes, with the view seen by a special windscreen-mounted camera. The monochrome result is shown in the dash-mounted COMAND display. As the camera responds more to heat sources than reflected light, according to Mercedes' figures, the infra-red view can pick up darkly bad pedestrians at about the same range as the dipped beam will spot those in light clothing a difference of around 40m. It also aids vision in rain and snow, although not in fog, where the heat reflection is too evenly distributed.
While the Night View Assist works as promised, our only reservation is the location of he display, where the early warning benefits of objects in the road could be negated by the driver taking his eyes off the road momentarily.
Either incorporating the view into a
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or providing a screen mounted closer to the driver's normal line of sight would be the ideal solution.