Have I missed something? (parking sensors)

Is it really true that I need to activate the parking sensors MANUALLY every time I'm parking or driving it to my garage?
When I'm in reverse the function automatically activates but what about when driving forward and then parking?

In all my other cars the front sensors are activated when driving at a certain slow speed.

Anyone?

Originally Posted by Mr Olsen

Is it really true that I need to activate the parking sensors MANUALLY every time I'm parking or driving it to my garage?
When I'm in reverse the function automatically activates but what about when driving forward and then parking?

In all my other cars the front sensors are activated when driving at a certain slow speed.

Anyone?

You are correct. Maybe you can recode this but that's how it works out of the box.

Originally Posted by lexhair

You are correct. Maybe you can recode this but that's how it works out of the box.

What a shame, I think that this is just too stupid.
Mercedes among others have managed this task to perfection but BMW just have to make it complicated.

It's not that I can't park without but when driving in to my garage it's just nice to have it activated and event though it's just a push of a button it's killing me

Originally Posted by Mr Olsen

What a shame, I think that this is just too stupid.
Mercedes among others have managed this task to perfection but BMW just have to make it complicated.

It's not that I can't park without but when driving in to my garage it's just nice to have it activated and event though it's just a push of a button it's killing me

On the flip side of it is the Volvo S80 I drove for a while. Everytime I came up on a dip or speed bump (they call it 'traffic calming' in Phoenix), it would light off. Wish that had a default off.

Originally Posted by lexhair

On the flip side of it is the Volvo S80 I drove for a while. Everytime I came up on a dip or speed bump (they call it 'traffic calming' in Phoenix), it would light off. Wish that had a default off.

Our other car is an S80 and lex is right, it can be damn anoying having it on all the time. If I forget to turn it off and get to close to a care at a trafic light I starts beeping. Usually right in the middle of an important news storie or my favorite song...

Along the lines of the S80 v BMW this is the second case of something working exactly backwards. On the S80 the parking break is push to activate and pull to release of course it is the other way around on the GT. (Which makes sense as you wouldn't want to lean over and activate it while you were moving!)

FWIW
DLM

Originally Posted by dmunz

Our other car is an S80 and lex is right, it can be damn anoying having it on all the time. If I forget to turn it off and get to close to a care at a trafic light I starts beeping. Usually right in the middle of an important news storie or my favorite song...

FWIW
DLM

At first I thought what Mr Olsen was saying made sense - that it would be helpful to have parking sensors on when pulling into the garage - but dmunz makes an excellent point. It would stink to have the sensor beeping in traffic or at the drive-up, etc.

Mr Olsen, I know it's a little hard to judge with the GT, so I take a sighting in order to determine how far to pull into the garage. I constantly think I'm going to run over a set of bikes stacked against the far wall of the garage, but then when I get out of the car, I see I'm 3 feet away from hitting them. I still haven't practiced with rubber garbage pails to get a feel for the edges of the car, but it's on the to-do list. Especially because I don't want my MSport front grill to scrape a curb stop!

I really don't know how the front parking sensors work on a Volvo but if any of you have ever owned a Porsche or a Mercedes you will know how great their systems work.
They are activated all the time but are made in a way where the sound only activates when you are getting within a certain distance of an object.
Funny enough this distance is just slightly closer than your normal distance to the car in front of you at a junction or similar.

Of cause I'll live with the way BMW have done it but it's just a pain to push the button every time now that I know it can be done better differently.

50% of all parking is initiated in reverse, if parking sensors engaged every time you went slow in drive...bumper to bumper traffic would be really frustrating....

I'll take needing to move my hand 2" to hit the very conveniently located parking button over needing to hit it thousands of times in traffic when i don't want it on.....

mp