Right, I've wasted some time this afternoon and I recorded some video clips of the system in action.
Let's get things cleared up first.
If someone ask me "Do you have Traffic Jam Assist or Traffic Jam Assist Plus?" The simple answer is "No, there is no such thing in the UK"
Feature called "Traffic Jam Assist" isn't mentioned in the description of the Driving Assistant Professional or anywhere in the iDrive? Please do correct me if I'm wrong.
What I do have is "Distance control" and "Assisted Driving" modes. First one is pretty self-explanatory. The other one is the "self driving" mode. Depending on speed, sufficient road markings, turn angle and whether there is a car in front of you, you do or you don't have to touch the steering wheel.
Normally after about 25 seconds of Assisted Driving it will flash amber LEDs on the steering wheel to remind you to hold the steering wheel. I have this disabled in iDrive because its just annoying. For the video recording purposes I enabled them back.There still is an icon on the dashboard that changes colours to indicate the state of the system.
Now, as I already have mentioned earlier. There is no indication of the car going "hands free" mode. The system activates automatically when all operating requirements are met. If there is something it doesn't like, for example, poor road markings it will simply go amber again. That's it.
That's my experience with this system. I hope that helps. English isn't my first language so excuse my grammar.
Videos below. Please bear in mind it's just a quick upload, raw footage. No music, captions or any voice over. When you hear the chime, that's the sound of the reminder to look up ahead.
First one is well over 4 minutes without touching the steering wheel. I think it didn't like the bollards on the side of the road and it eventually went amber. I must warn you. It's boring!
This one is the same road and again it didn't like the bollards going over the bridge. Went amber twice but this time I've carried on recording. Over 7 minutes in traffic and touched the steering wheel twice just on that bridge.
This is just over 2 minutes video. Different road. Not sure what was the reason for it to disengage there.
Some pics as well