I have always been fascinated by the remote-retractable rear head restraints on Mercedes-Benz products and thought it was cool to see this feature on the RL. However, I am curious about how useful this feature is. Whenever I see a Mercedes with passengers in the back, I rarely see the head restraints in the raised position. A head restraint is designed to prevent whiplash (and provide comfort) and serves absolutely no purpose if it is left in the retracted position. With the restraint neatly retracting into a "cubby", I think most passengers do not even realize they are there.

So I guess my question to you '05+ owners is do you (or your passengers) use the rear head restraints ever, or are they primarily left in the retracted position? If you do use them, do you ever use the button on the overhead console to retract them? Do you find this feature useful or "nifty" or did you not even know it was there?

 

I used it the first week I had the car to show it off. I NEVER have people in the backseat so, to me the feature is useless

 

you should be able to bring them up from the button rather than just down. the whole thing is cheap how it works since all the button does is seem to move a latch or something that has them fall down.

 

 

If I know that I am going to have passengers in the back seat for an extended trip, then I will crawl in the backseat and raise the required number of head restraints prior to picking up my guests. After I drop them off at the end of the trip, it is handy to be able to push a button to lower the head restraints rather than having to crawl into the back seat again. I agree that the entire process would be much easier (and subsequently more likely to be used more often) if the head restraints could be individually raised and lowered by remote means by the driver.

 

Volvo has (had) a great feature for the retractable head restraints in the S80. When they were "lowered" they fell forward so that any rear seat passenger could easily move them up when they entered the car. It makes sense so that the restraints were always in use when needed. Maybe Acura could investigate this feature.

 

This is a more logical system, although the system of the RL is so much more clean looking.