Let me double check here, I’ve read the manual three or four times and duckduckgo searched, but I may have missed something. For cars that have both front and rear parking sensors and parking assistance, BMW/Mini software still doesn’t let you manually disable or silence the audible alarm when in reverse and moving? The P toggle switch nor iDrive settings don't seem to do anything for reverse/rear, it seems to disable only the front. My parking area has several nearby support posts that drive the parking alerts nuts, and annoys me in surround sound . And then there are the trash cans. I've turned the relative volume down the whole way, but I guess there is a minimum.
After reading this, MINI's going to start charging extra for the SEs in which they forgot to install the rear parking sensors, claiming it's a feature, not a bug. I never knew there was a way to turn off the front sensors or that there was a volume control for the alerts. I wonder what the Bimmercode gurus have to say about disabling the rear parking sensors?
I have both front and rear, and the little switch on the console silences/disables them for one 'parking' event (e.g. when I go to a car-wash or drive-through, I hit that and it kills it until I go faster than 'parking maneuvering speeds' and then it auto-re-enables)
So while you are backing out of a parking spot with audio alarm blaring, press the toggle switch and it stops? My recent 2022 doesn't do that. Maybe I have to catch it before reversing/moving to preempt the alarm? I didn't try that yet.
Think they will charge me for enabling the disable rear sensors feature. After all its not a bug either? ... I should probably wait till I try disabling it before reversing. That may be what I did for the front today, disabled it before pulling into the parking spot.
So it looks like when I disable park sense (toggle switch) before backing up, the tone is disabled. When I wait for the audio tone, It can't be silenced. Then I noticed this statement in the owners manual: "Depending on the equipment version, the system cannot be switched off manually if the reverse gear is engaged." So that may be the trick. Take it out of reverse, manually disable, then reverse. I'm sure this is old hat for mini folks. Dunno if this behavior is related to the parking assistance feature..... I think the green LED in the P toggle switch lights up when the tones are disabled. There is also one of those be careful when using this feature type notices on screen.
I spoke too soon, this morning I couldn't get the rear tone to silence regardless, before or after a trip. The front silenced nicely.
It seems, for model year 2022 SEs equipped with rear PDC, PDC is automatically activated when R is engaged. Doesn't seem to be anyway to disable it, same as BMWs of a decade ago. The automatic front PDC activation can be disabled in one of the menus.
