I have had the problems with the BAS/ESP light before. It usually goes away after a "re-boot" (turning the engine off and then back on)

Here is my latest version of the story.

On at trip far from home last week, I was in the left lane on cruise control, when a semi truck pulled in front of me from the right lane.

I had to apply the brake pedal extra hard to slow down and give him enough room to change lanes, and when I took my foot off the brake the ML sped back up. The BAS/ESP light was on and the brake pedal did not disengage the cruise control.


I pulled off at the next rest stop, to re-boot. The BAS/ESP light would go off upon restart, but come back on the minute I stepped on the brake pedal. I repeated several times, before I decided to drive on without brake lights.

I could not shift out of park. Luckily I knew the trick to manually overide the shift lock.

I called my dealer, in Little Rock, Arkansas, and got the number of the dealer in Des Moines, Iowa (whatever happened to that book that came with the car and had all of the dealers listed, discontinued now I guess?)

I plugged the address into my NAV system, drove to the dealer, had the switch replaced (covered under Starmark) and drove on to Minneapolis.

All's well, BUT I think that it is a safety hazard that the failure of the brake light switch ("a known problem, that's why we keep them in stock") can cause problems much beyond just whether you have brake lights or not. It could very well have caused me to drive into the back of a semi-truck trailer!

George

Don't be so certain that because the light in the dash is on, the lights out back are off. The dash light is fixed to stay on so you notice it.

Thanks, but I did triple check that.

The lights out back were not working.

The "Step on the brake pedal to shift out of park" was not working.

The "Step on the brake pedal to cancel cruise control" was not working.

I checked these functions several times. The only way to get out of cruise control seemed to be to press forward on the cruise control lever.

This is what I consider to be the big safety hazard. I am so used to turning off the cruise control with a slight tap on the brake pedal, that it took me a little while to remember that I could cancel it with the lever. In a tight situation, when your vehicle is accelerating quickly toward the rear end of a semi-trailer truck, after trying to slow down with the brake pedal, I can see how an accident could happen.

George