Is your spouse a two foot driver? The early 210 cars had a feature/bug where depressing both the throttle and brake pedal simultaneously triggered a fault and lit the BAS idiot light. I recall reading about the problem in The Star back when I was an MBCA member. Also experienced it firsthand on my 1998 E300 after loaning it to my father-in-law (who of course claims he never rests his foot on the brake...). MB had a fix, either a new electronic module or a software update, forget which. Also, while this problem applied to my early 1998 car, it may not be present on your 1999 version.

- JimY