BlueCruise experience after a few thousand miles - luke warm

[Hank42]

I just came back from another long road trip with BluesClues, and I have finally come to the following conclusion:
"I'm glad I'm not paying for this turd"

The tech works pretty well - I have no complaints with it holding the lane for hundreds of miles, or accommodating other vehicles that merge into my lane. It's pretty good about that, and I like that I can lane shift without fighting the wheel.

My main issue comes down to how Ford chose to notify the driver of various factors related to safety. The nags about "watch the road" and "keep your hands on the wheel" are well known. They get your attention for certain. Over all this time driving with it, I find the "watch the road" nags to have a counter safety effect - often I'm looking at the map to identify a route or find some other piece of information that is needed to aid in my journey. I find that instead of getting the information I need, I respond to the alert and stare at the road long enough for the alarm to go away and then I have to reset my focus back on the console to find the information I was looking for - often 3-4 times. That is even more time spent with my eyes off the road, and more importantly, my focus and attention is shattered having to task switch so many times - the opposite intent of the warning. I know this has been beaten to death from a complaint standpoint, but the more I use it, the more I dislike it, and the more I feel less safe when responding to the nags.

My next complaint is kind of the opposite - there are NO nags when there probably should be in some circumstances.
When driving long distances with BlueClues engaged, there are points when it disengages with seemingly no warning - sure, a small "ding" might be heard - if you're paying attention for it over conversation, or a good song on the radio. And you might catch blue on blue "hands free" icon on the speedo screen fade away - but only if you're looking at it, but you're probably not, because you've been conditioned by the nags to "keep your eyes on the road". This is scary when you realize the truck is not following that curve the way you'd expect and you take over and realize it disengaged and you missed the notification. I get the whole "Blue" theme, but at the very least, make that hands-free icon a different color, or shape or something when engaged vs disengaged - something that I can see with my peripheral vision (because - I'm not allowed to take my eyes off the road !)

Same behavior when changing lanes - yes, I know it disengages when I change lanes, but there's no decent feedback (without staring at the dash, something we're not supposed to do!) when it has re-engaged in the new lane.
I actually would prefer to be "nagged" with the same zeal of "keep your on the road" when it does disengage (I understand why it drops out in certain places.)

And as much as I don't want to bring the T-word into this, Tesla's approach with nags is more effective - starts off with a gentle silent visual suggestion for the driver, and then escalates the more time you spend being non-compliant ending up with audible alerts and finally a major warning for all the occupants in the vehicle to hear and perhaps take action.

Sponsored

 

[chillaban]

One thing to keep in mind about the nags is that forcing you to look at the road once every 6 seconds or so is probably why nobody's gotten killed/beheaded by a semi truck in a BlueCruise vehicle. The NHTSA and NTSB investigations of fatal Autopilot accidents almost all find a common thread that the driver went for a minute without looking at the road, precisely because their steering nag system allows the driver to play around with the navigation system or do whatever else all while mindlessly tugging on the wheel, not looking at the road.

A lot can happen at 70mph in 6 seconds (you travel 600 feet in that time frame, over 2 city blocks). Yes you may have situations where your attention is drawn towards the maps or another legitimate driving situation, but that still warrants a reminder that your primary driving responsibility is to be looking at the road for safety issues, not correctly navigating to your destination.

 

[Wsl346]

One thing to keep in mind about the nags is that forcing you to look at the road once every 6 seconds or so is probably why nobody's gotten killed/beheaded by a semi truck in a BlueCruise vehicle. The NHTSA and NTSB investigations of fatal Autopilot accidents almost all find a common thread that the driver went for a minute without looking at the road, precisely because their steering nag system allows the driver to play around with the navigation system or do whatever else all while mindlessly tugging on the wheel, not looking at the road.

A lot can happen at 70mph in 6 seconds (you travel 600 feet in that time frame, over 2 city blocks). Yes you may have situations where your attention is drawn towards the maps or another legitimate driving situation, but that still warrants a reminder that your primary driving responsibility is to be looking at the road for safety issues, not correctly navigating to your destination.

This is my eye roll moment whenever someone complains about BC only giving you 5-6 seconds before it nags you. You are hurling a 6,500lb vehicle down the road at highway speeds. Your number one priority should be what is in front of you, not where is the closest Wendys to stop at to get some spicy nugs.

 

[Hank42]

One thing to keep in mind about the nags is that forcing you to look at the road once every 6 seconds or so is probably why nobody's gotten killed/beheaded by a semi truck in a BlueCruise vehicle. The NHTSA and NTSB investigations of fatal Autopilot accidents almost all find a common thread that the driver went for a minute without looking at the road, precisely because their steering nag system allows the driver to play around with the navigation system or do whatever else all while mindlessly tugging on the wheel, not looking at the road.

A lot can happen at 70mph in 6 seconds (you travel 600 feet in that time frame, over 2 city blocks). Yes you may have situations where your attention is drawn towards the maps or another legitimate driving situation, but that still warrants a reminder that your primary driving responsibility is to be looking at the road for safety issues, not correctly navigating to your destination.

Valid argument and it is why the nags exist. I've driven other "driver assist" vehicles and none of them are this invasive - they actually assist, and are equally safe and more effective. I am not sure why Ford chose to be so aggressive. And I'm not against the nags, in fact, you'll see that I think they are necessary, maybe misplaced (disengagment should be more prominent)

 

[Hank42]

This is my eye roll moment whenever someone complains about BC only giving you 5-6 seconds before it nags you. You are hurling a 6,500lb vehicle down the road at highway speeds. Your number one priority should be what is in front of you, not where is the closest Wendys to stop at to get some spicy nugs.

Yup, I hear ya, and hesitated to even write about it for fear of the "eyeroll" response, but decided to mention it anyway - the nags are necessary, but the implementation, in my opinion, needs improvement. Consider this my PSA to try to provide that feedback - not take a position on the necessity of the nags. (Yes, I also logged it with the SYNC feedback option)

 

[chillaban]

Valid argument and it is why the nags exist. I've driven other "driver assist" vehicles and none of them are this invasive - they actually assist, and are equally safe and more effective. I am not sure why Ford chose to be so aggressive. And I'm not against the nags, in fact, you'll see that I think they are necessary, maybe misplaced (disengagment should be more prominent)

I do agree with you that the disengagement strategy is pretty awful. Basically when BC thinks your hands are on the wheel recently, disengagements are a single ding and the word “canceled”. When it thinks your hands aren’t on the wheel, then it does the angry alarm tone and the red message to take over (and it actually does continue to steer during that time).

I find it often falsely thinks my hands are on the wheel when they really are not. Tesla has the opposite problem where Autopilot really forces you to forcefully wrestle control back from the car even when it’s making a mistake, while often times with BC a disengagement is not felt by passengers.

I have this love hate relationship with FSD/Autopilot where as much as I think it’s more capable, it also drives in a manner that frequently results in passengers being uncomfortable and wishing I would not be using it, while I’ve never gotten that feedback from using BC.

I really hope BC 1.3 compared to 1.0 dramatically improves on the steering correctness.

 

[TaxmanHog]

I'd love to have a heads up display for the status of Blue Cruise @Ford Motor Company does not need to be a full blown replication of the drivers dash, but a couple key indicators.

 

[Bokenator]

My gripe is related, which is when the adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assist are both on, but your not on a Blue Cruise or "Hands Free" road. When the system is working as designed, I am constantly needing to put pressure or tweak the steering wheel just to assure the system I am paying attention. If the lane keeping system is working properly, then no corrections are needed and the system is constantly warning me to keep my hands on the wheel even though my hands are already on the wheel. This was particularly evident when driving in south Georgia and north Florida on non-interstate roads, which are flat and straight.

I feel this warning pops up about every 15 seconds. It's gotten so annoying that I have actually disabled lane keeping as a result. At least Ford put a special button on the steering wheel so I didn't have to go scrolling through menus on the center screen to disable/enable the lane keeping assist.

 

[swajames]

The nags are absolutely not working well. The big one is when it asks you to suddenly resume control or tells you that it no longer is running with the truck having control with an easily missable nag that's nowhere near as forceful as it should be.

The warning that pops up when it worries you are about to have a collision is unmissable, these should be similarly unmissable.

Overall I think BlueCruse hands free works very well - but the nags/warnings do not.

 

[Bills R Electric]

I just came back from another long road trip with BluesClues, and I have finally come to the following conclusion:
"I'm glad I'm not paying for this turd"

The tech works pretty well - I have no complaints with it holding the lane for hundreds of miles, or accommodating other vehicles that merge into my lane. It's pretty good about that, and I like that I can lane shift without fighting the wheel.

My main issue comes down to how Ford chose to notify the driver of various factors related to safety. The nags about "watch the road" and "keep your hands on the wheel" are well known. They get your attention for certain. Over all this time driving with it, I find the "watch the road" nags to have a counter safety effect - often I'm looking at the map to identify a route or find some other piece of information that is needed to aid in my journey. I find that instead of getting the information I need, I respond to the alert and stare at the road long enough for the alarm to go away and then I have to reset my focus back on the console to find the information I was looking for - often 3-4 times. That is even more time spent with my eyes off the road, and more importantly, my focus and attention is shattered having to task switch so many times - the opposite intent of the warning. I know this has been beaten to death from a complaint standpoint, but the more I use it, the more I dislike it, and the more I feel less safe when responding to the nags.

My next complaint is kind of the opposite - there are NO nags when there probably should be in some circumstances.
When driving long distances with BlueClues engaged, there are points when it disengages with seemingly no warning - sure, a small "ding" might be heard - if you're paying attention for it over conversation, or a good song on the radio. And you might catch blue on blue "hands free" icon on the speedo screen fade away - but only if you're looking at it, but you're probably not, because you've been conditioned by the nags to "keep your eyes on the road". This is scary when you realize the truck is not following that curve the way you'd expect and you take over and realize it disengaged and you missed the notification. I get the whole "Blue" theme, but at the very least, make that hands-free icon a different color, or shape or something when engaged vs disengaged - something that I can see with my peripheral vision (because - I'm not allowed to take my eyes off the road !)

Same behavior when changing lanes - yes, I know it disengages when I change lanes, but there's no decent feedback (without staring at the dash, something we're not supposed to do!) when it has re-engaged in the new lane.
I actually would prefer to be "nagged" with the same zeal of "keep your on the road" when it does disengage (I understand why it drops out in certain places.)

And as much as I don't want to bring the T-word into this, Tesla's approach with nags is more effective - starts off with a gentle silent visual suggestion for the driver, and then escalates the more time you spend being non-compliant ending up with audible alerts and finally a major warning for all the occupants in the vehicle to hear and perhaps take action.

Tesla's FSD is a totally different animal.

Bluecruise should be viewed as a really nice upgrade to cruise control. That's it. It is not in the self-driving world.

Tesla also charges what...$14,000 for their FSD?

Bluecruise is fine for what it is. I find it a nice experience going up and down I-95 for hours, for example. I got 3 years included for free, so the price is right. I don't expect it to drive me completely.

If I want FULL self-driving software, I will have to buy a Tesla and pay the $14,000 grand.

Sponsored