Dangerous Unexpected Adaptive Cruise Control Behavior - Sudden Braking Following "RESUME CONTROL" Message

[Jim Lewis]

I've been using adaptive cruise control on relatively limited access 35 to 45 mph "country" roads in San Antonio. The cruise control maintains my speed and lane, even going around gentle, even curves.

Today, I was driving a perfectly straight one-mile or so stretch of 45 mph road with no traffic around me. Out of the blue, I get a KEEP HANDS ON STEERING WHEEL message. Both hands tightly gripped the steering wheel, and I moved them and gripped the steering wheel slightly differently just to give the monitoring system new feedback. KEEP HANDS ON STEERING WHEEL persisted. Then I got RESUME CONTROL with beeping, IIRC. I thought, "Oh, well. I've been through this before. The system will cancel, and I'll just take over driving." Instead, RESUME CONTROL continued, followed by two hard, short automatic braking pulses. I thought, "That was weird," but I did nothing. Then, two more hard pulses of automatic braking. I tapped the brakes. Cruise control messaging and misbehavior disappeared, and I manually drove the rest of the way home.

Today was a great day for driving a Ford EV. Weird, unsafe, unmerited behavior from FORD cruise control and flaky charging behavior from Ford servers, courtesy of iOS FordPass, v5.9: https://www.f150lightningforum.com/...-time-doesnt-work-in-ios-fordpass-v5-9.23501/

@Ford Motor Company, I hope, as well as handing out plaudits for pretty Lightning pictures and accounts of fun road trips that you report owner problems back to Ford designers and programmers and encourage them to make their expensive stuff actually work right eventually if "to begin with" is too much to hope for.

Sponsored

 

[RickLightning]

That braking was to jar you to resume control.

Gripping the steering wheel isn't the feedback that it's looking for, you need to MOVE the steering wheel. A slight adjustment is all that it takes.

 

[16cards]

You likely tapped the button on the steering wheel

 

[Jim Lewis]

I thought there was an update a while back that was supposed to minimize spurious messages to KEEP YOUR HANDS ON THE STEERING WHEEL. A year ago or so, that was a more problematic "ghost" problem. The problem is not that my hands aren't on the steering wheel and that my eyes aren't straight ahead down the road. It's Ford Motor Company purveying a flaky system.

And I've gotten RESUME CONTROL quite often in the past, but the vehicle just quit controlling the driving. I never had to do anything before or got brake pulses before to make me show a sign of anything. Moving my hands on the steering wheel (which perhaps let the steering wheel move a bit) has usually worked to dismiss the KEEP HANDS ON STEERING wheel message, which was said to result from poor camera monitoring. I NEVER remove either hand from the steering wheel. So, Ford camera monitoring stinks in making the KEEP HANDS ON THE STEERING wheel determination. I can understand that Ford might have decided to change the behavior of the system in doing an update. But if they did, they do a LOUSY job communicating any such changes. Goes along perfectly with their cryptic descriptions of what's in an update to begin with.

The problem may be that I have lane-keeping turned on to work in concert with the intended speed maintenance that comes from activating adaptive cruise control. The best answer for me seems to be to hit the Cancel Cruise control button at the first sign of any KEEP YOUR HANDS ON THE STEERING WHEEL message.

 

[PJnc284]

So, Ford camera monitoring stinks in making the KEEP HANDS ON THE STEERING wheel determination. I can understand that Ford might have decided to change the behavior of the system in doing an update. But if they did, they do a LOUSY job communicating any such changes. Goes along perfectly with their cryptic descriptions of what's in an update to begin with.

The camera has nothing to do with regular hands-on lane centering/adaptive cruise. That uses (and always has) a torque sensor on the wheel so you physically need to provide resistance. It can at times be quite finicky though especially on straight roads.

 

[Pioneer74]

Gripping the wheel won't get rid of the keep hands in steering wheel message. The truck has to sense torque from turning the steering wheel.

 

[Runaway Tractor]

The brake tapping is to wake up a sleeping or heavily distracted driver. I can attest to it's effectiveness as it woke me up once.

 

[Jim Lewis]

The manual does say the following under Adaptive Cruise Control:

I've driven that same section of road dozens of times with my hands tightly gripping the wheel and never gotten a KEEP HANDS ON STEERING wheel message before. One would think that the resistance to the steering wheel moving in any direction would be considered torque, but I guess it's not. It's stupid when one needs to drive straight to be safe on that perfectly straight road (open gutters on one side, traffic in a neighboring same-direction lane on the other) that you need to move the steering wheel away from driving straight ahead to be safe. Ha ha.

On RESUME CONTROL, "you must immediately take full control of the vehicle" is wonderfully vague. What exactly does that mean?

As I said, the best answer to this nonsense is the CANCEL button on the steering wheel. When Ford's sensing mechanisms aren't happy with a driver tightly gripping the wheel, eyes on the road, and driving with no change in steering down a perfectly straight road, as I've done many times before in the exact location, the best thing is to stop putting up with Ford's driving assist nonsense.

 

[PJnc284]

Something that's really dangerous is the new curve control with the updated blue cruise. Based on the description, this would be handled by "predictive speed assist" but that's not the case (at least not for those of use who were using it early). Even with regular hands-on lane centering, it slows down a 1/2 mile before a curve and then can't figure out if it wants to go slower or faster when it could easily maintain the set speed. Then it randomly cancels midway through the turn and goes full throttle to whatever your preset speed is. Only way I found to disable it was to turn it off in FORScan.

 

[TaxmanHog]

This road must not be a mapped Hands free zone, your hands must always be present on the wheel with an occasional torquing left or right, this assures the truck you're in control even if it's able to give you substantial assistance.

 

[Runaway Tractor]

aren't happy with a driver tightly gripping the wheel,

Tightly gripping the wheel is not and never has been what your are supposed to do.

 

[TaxmanHog]

Hands Free roads, limited access divided highways {freeways}

 

[hturnerfamily]

we have to also differentiate between the original post saying 'adaptive cruise' versus what some others automatically think of as 'blue cruise'... but, they are not the same.

My PRO has Adaptive Cruise and Lane Centering, after I ADDED it, and it works great - but, I will tell you that there are TIMES, very infrequently, though, that the truck, and ANY vehicle with this type of technology, MAY have issues created by not only SUN GLARE/REFLECTIONS, but also by hills/overpasses that can seem to throw it into a tail spin... a vehicle sitting at an intersection waiting for you to pass also can 'seem' to be in your lane, and the vehicle responds accordingly...

Blue Cruise requires roadways that are in the software, but basic 'Adaptive Cruise/Lane Centering' does not - it can work ANYWHERE, when you turn it on, as long as it can read the side road stripes effectively.

 

[TaxmanHog]

we have to also differentiate between the original post saying 'adaptive cruise' versus what some others automatically think of as 'blue cruise'... but, they are not the same.

It is this simple, non Hands Free roads require full navigational control even if the system provides some steering input, call it what you want, I'm clearly understanding Jim's discussion regarding the Adaptive Cruise control does not equal Hands Free driving.

 

[Jim Lewis]

This road must not be a mapped Hands free zone, your hands must always be present on the wheel with an occasional torquing left or right

I see @hturnerfamily just provided pretty much the same BlueCruise answer I've written below.

The driving situation I'm describing does not involve hands-free BlueCruise driving. As in @TaxmanHog's quote, that driving mode will only turn on if you're on a mapped road that's judged safe enough for that mode of driving. Even if you're on such a road, when you go through a construction zone or over something like a narrow bridge, hands-free BlueCruise driving may temporarily turn off.

When you're not in such a zone (but still in a mapped zone), and you press the adaptive cruise control icon, you'll get hands-on-the-wheel driving (a steering wheel icon appears on the top left of the dash). Although I don't remember reading about it in the manual, if you have lane-keeping turned on, you'll get that, too. That's the driving mode I was in. I've never seen the BlueCruise hands-free icon flash on when on the roads I'm describing.

What Ford should say in their manual to make things perfectly clear:

CAUTION: When driving down a perfectly straight road with adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping turned on, you must continually torque the wheel slightly left and right. If you don't do this, we'll warn you that you don't have your hands on the wheel, even if you do. And if you fail to start torquing, we'll advise you to "resume full control," even though we won't tell you exactly what that means in the manual. And then, without any further warning on the dash, we'll hard pulse the brakes (but we won't compensate you for anyone who rear-ends you, especially if you're stupid enough to think the pulsing means you yourself should immediately brake hard, pull over, or whatever, and have an accident doing so).

Having that sequence of events described in the manual would make clear how rubber-bands-and-bubble-gum the Ford system is for monitoring you and "alerting" you to take control.

Here's an idea. Ford could alternate the warning message on the dash with text that advises you how to remedy the situation. KEEP HANDS ON STEERING WHEEL could alternate with SLIGHTLY TORQUE STEERING WHEEL. RESUME CONTROL could alternate with SLIGHTLY TORQUE STEERING WHEEL OR TAP BRAKE. Or RESUME CONTROL could alternate with CANCEL CRUISE CONTROL.

An even better idea is that Ford has the Ford Assistant. And what does Ford do with that voice capability? Nothing very clever. Rather than having to read your dash to find out what the beeping is, taking your eyes on the road in a potentially busy and very dangerous situation, why not have the Ford Assistant do something useful? When KEEP HANDS ON STEERING WHEEL comes on, the Ford Assistant could cut all other audio in the truck and audibly describe what the driver should do to satisfy the monitoring system. The same if RESUME CONTROL comes next. The driver wouldn't have to take his eyes off the road (but you could still have the dash text alerts and descriptions). Audible advice on vehicle alerts could be made an owner-configurable option.

Another idea would be to have a system that actually tests whether the driver's hands are on the wheel by slightly moving the steering wheel back and forth and detecting whether there is any resistance rather than requiring the driver to do the moving. If real safety is having both hands on the wheel, maybe Ford should invent a system that actually determines that, rather than one where a driver might just wiggle the steering wheel with a few fingers of one hand and not really be in full control of the vehicle.

Sponsored