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Mercedes Benz Egypt organizes Safety Driving Training with 2014 S-Class, E-Class, C-Class, CLA, A-Class, B-Class and GLK !

Driving a Mercedes Benz is not only a ‘luxurious’ driving experience’ but also a ‘safety’ driving experience.

And while I enjoyed very much driving the luxurious Mercedes E 500 and the mind-blowing E63 AMG during the international launch last year on the roads in and around Barcelona (Spain), it was even more enjoyable to experience some of the advanced active safety features of the Mercedes E-Class and the other Mercedes models as well, but this time on a closed and dedicated safety driving circuit.

Especially the safety features of the Mercedes S-Class and the excellent handling of the CLA impressed me a lot.

Unfortunately the time-frame for this ‘Safety Driving Experience Day’ was very small so I could not drive all the Mercedes models available, such as the GLK and the B-Class. And of course therefore we also did not have enough time to make pictures and videos which would have demonstrated the extreme safe and benchmark-setting technology of the S-Class and the other models.

But I hope Mercedes Benz Egypt will organize such a Driving Experience Day soon again; so that we would have more time to test all the Mercedes models, spend more time in exploring the other safety features and to get more acquainted to the very good handling and maneuverability of those models on a closed and safe circuit instead of doing so on public roads, and possibly endangering us and other motorists on the road.
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Mercedes-Benz Egypt organized this driving experience day with the aim of raising awareness of road safety issues in Egypt and to showcase the brand’s most cutting-edge safety innovations to the local motoring media, life-style media and general-interest media.

The event was hosted on the Egyptian Road Safety Training Center and included both theoretical and technical road safety training sessions, highlighting and explaining only a few of the vast numbers of the latest award-winning active and passive features, such as the Pre-Safe, Intelligent Drive and Distronic Plus.

The Mercedes S500 Intelligent Drive received the ‘Innovation der Vernunft 2014’ award just last week while the PRE-SAFE technology received the same award already in 2002 in Germany.

This safety and driving event was prepared, presented and conducted by members of the Mercedes Benz Intensive Driving Training team, namely Mr. Thomas Posch, Markus Reiter, Axel Hofmann and Wolfgang Ebert.


Beginning with presentations by the German professional driving instructors on the importance of road safety for drivers, passengers and pedestrians, special insights were given about the unrivaled safety advances of the Mercedes-Benz models featured during the driving event namely the A-class, B-class, C-class, CLA-class, GLK , E-class and S class.

As many of us might know, Mercedes-Benz enjoys a long-standing tradition of engineering expertise and a strong commitment to innovation and ingenuity to help develop safe, sustainable and technologically advanced cars ensuring that its world-class luxury vehicles are equipped with intelligent driving systems and technologies contributing to a safer driving experience for the benefit of other drivers as well as passengers and pedestrians.

This tradition started decades ago with the implementation of crash test and safety features, such as the ABS, in the development of all the different models, including the W126 and the W124 at that time.

Mercedes-Benz organizes driving events such as this safety driving experience, to showcase the superior nature and technology of its cars while raising awareness of the importance of learning safe driving techniques.

On the course, the professional driving instructors from Stuttgart took the guests for test drives on several training module tracks to demonstrate safe driving techniques and the latest state-of-the-art safety technology from Mercedes-Benz.

Specifically, the intelligent driving course was intended to showcase innovations related to safe braking including exclusive pre-safe brake feature with active pedestrian protection, rear end collision warning and anticipatory safety system, as well as speed limit and traffic sign assist and PARKTRONIC with active park assist which enables automatic parking in lengthways and crossways parking spaces.

Due to the limited space at the Egyptian Road Safety Center unfortunately not all of the active safety features could be demonstrated or experienced on low or medium speed. But those few features which we were able to experience during this extremely short afternoon were still quite impressive.

Taking matters into their own hands, guests later on navigated the safety comprehension course which included obstacles intended to teach drivers correct observation techniques, correct braking, and correct steering and counter-steering.

The fact that the translation of the Egyptian trainers was not always very helpful, aside of the fact that one needs at least 2-3 hours to learn correct braking and correct steering in just one module (e.g. Avoid Obstacle Module), still those training modules were surely very helpful for many of the guest who did such a Mercedes driving training for the first time.

The agility course allowed guests the opportunity to test Mercedes-Benz features on a course that includes slalom, corners, lane-changes and straight stretches of the course for acceleration.

Although the agility features tested on this course were supposed to demonstrate the harmonic output evolvement of the BlueEFFICIENCY engine generation, direct control, and the 7G-Tronic Plus Gearbox for faster gear shifts, there was not much time available to concentrate and focus enough on the advantages of the Mercedes Benz BlueEFFICIENCY and the 7G-Tronic Plus technology.

After spending the afternoon with the Mercedes-Benz Egypt team and the professional driving instructors from Mercedes Benz in Germany, my colleague Alhussein El Shennawy was happy with the safety instructions he received from the German instructors and he was even more impressed with the correct driving and steering techniques he was able to learn and execute during this short afternoon on such premium cars, such as the Mercedes E-Class and the Mercedes S-Class.

Since I have already participated in many Safety Driving Trainings in many parts of the world, including the very impressive and very professional Mercedes Benz Intensive Safety Driving Training in Germany, I know how important such trainings are for both the experienced and not-so-experienced customers.

What I liked most about the Mercedes Benz Intensive Driving Training in Germany is that we receive a diagram with our reaction time, braking force and timings in the early morning when we start the training and another diagram in the late afternoon after we finish the training in order to see how much we improved our driving skills (see pictures in the article).

I personally applaud Mercedes Benz Egypt and its Marketing and PR team for offering such a Mercedes-Benz safety driving event for the media and the Mercedes clients, which can surely be considered the latest in a long line of initiatives that Mercedes-Benz Egypt has undertaken to raise awareness of the importance of road safety in Egypt.

I hope Mercedes Benz Egypt will soon offer another full-day or two-day Intensive Safety Driving Training for its clients and the professional motoring media in order to get more acquainted to the superb and benchmark-setting safety and technology features.

And since all the attended guest were impressed and enjoying that event a lot after the great efforts of the Mercedes Benz Egypt team and Traccs team, I am sure this will encourage Mercedes Benz Egypt even more to organize such an event again very soon, after which the guests would receive their certificate and their reaction time diagram.

Last but not least, with this event Mercedes Benz Egypt surely set the benchmark for professional customer and media driving events in Egypt a little bit higher among the other car companies operating in Egypt!

Stay tuned for more interesting news about the all-new 2014 Mercedes C-Class and other Mercedes models, very soon here on autoarabia.org !

Mohamed Sheta
11.02.2014
Cairo – Stuttgart

(N.B.: More picture will be uploaded tomorrow)


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