Mercedes-Benz has received the necessary approval to roll out special marker lights used to support its conditionally automated driving system, Drive Pilot, in Germany. The OEM confirmed that this approval is valid across the country for testing purposes and will initially be limited to 2028.
This approval allows for a Mercedes-Benz vehicle equipped with Drive Pilot to utilize exterior lighting that indicates the system’s status to other road users. In deploying these marker lights, Mercedes-Benz is aiming to help traffic authorities and police more easily recognize Drive Pilot’s status and help them assess if the user is allowed to engage other activities while the function is active.
Drive Pilot’s special market lights are integrated into both the front and rear vehicle lights, as well as the side indicators in the exterior mirrors. When the function is activated, these lights switch on and are illuminated continuously in turquoise, a color Mercedes-Benz is more broadly campaigning to be established for functions like Drive Pilot that facilitate conditionally automated driving and higher.
The marker lights are at the center of a special exemption granted by the Stuttgart Regional Council which allows them to initially be used for testing purposes. Throughout this testing phase, Mercedes-Benz plans to collect insights that will help it shape a legal framework around the marker lights, through which it will then aim to bring them into series production. In the U.S. states of Nevada and California, where a similar approval was granted towards the end of 2023, Mercedes-Benz is already testing the turquoise marker lights.
Turquoise itself was chosen by Mercedes-Benz as the key color for its marker lights for two reasons: its visibility, and its difference to the colors already being used in traffic or emergency lighting. While reducing the risk of confusion, the OEM also positioned the visibility of turquoise as being reliable and recognizable by other road users and pedestrians.
In researching the color, Mercedes-Benz also found that it performed better than others in physiological and psychological factors. Here, the automaker said that a series of engineers, compliance managers, data protection officers and ethics experts supported it in both the development and approval of the new lighting concept.
