Let's talk about a dangerous, and maybe deadly, BlueCruise flaw

[Jimrpa]

Warning TL;DR but you should read it.

I love Blue Cruise and I especially love the Hands Free part of Blue Cruise. I drive the freeways of Southern California. Some of the busiest freeways in the world are here and BCHF makes it a dream to drive them. But, over the last few months I've discovered a flaw that nearly killed me. It would be an easy software fix but Ford has not fixed it and I see no one talking about it.

Background: Ford does a good job at alerting the driver when action needs to be taken while using BC. For example, if your eyes drift for too long it lowers the volume on the stereo and plays a loud bong song to get your attention while showing a notice on the IP until it's satisfied you're looking at the road. It's annoying and should be. Similarly, when it drops out of Hands Free Blue Cruise into just lane centering cruise control the IP tells you to
put your hands on the wheel. It still keeps lane centering and keeps its distance from the car in front but after about 10 seconds it will lower the volume on the stereo and plays the loud bong until you put your hands on the steering wheel.

So far so good. Here's where the danger occurs...

While you're in BCHF and there's a mechanical failure there's inherent danger. By mechanical failure I'm referring to the radar or camera or a wire, for instance. When this type of failure occurs it does NOT lower the volume on the stereo and it does NOT give a loud bong warning until you respond. Instead it gives a pleasant "ding" sound that is NOTpossible to hear if music is playing. In addition to that it shows "Canceled" in orange around the car icon on the IP for less than 2 seconds. That's it! No warning that you must take control of the car and that you're in free fall. You now have no hands free, no lane centering, no distance control from the care in front of you. Nothing. If you are in Whisper mode the car doesn't even slow down.

So why is this dangerous? Because if you don't happen to notice the orange cancelled sign on the IP you'll never notice that it's dropped out of BC. Especially in whisper mode. The car is just driving aimlessly, literally aimlessly on it's own.

I had this issue. I had a mechanical failure, a bad wire, that would cause BC to fail when the car sat in the sun and got physically hot. This has happened well over 100 times in the last 4 months until my dealer just recently replaced the wire. Each occurrence shows up in a log in Ford Pass. The number of entries in my Ford Pass message log is in the 3 digits.

However, the first time was the nearly fatal one. Look at the photo below. As you can see the center divider walls in SoCal are very close to the vehicle. Maybe 18 inches. The photo doesn't show it but imagine I'm driving on a part of the freeway that is curving to the right. Now imagine I'm in BCHF at 78 mph. The car is basically pointing at that center divider and the only thing keeping the car from driving into the center divider is that BCHF is continuously turning the wheels toward the right to keep on the curve.

Now imagine, and I don't have to imagine because I experienced it, that BCHF cancels while on that curve while going 78 mph while you're looking at the infotainment screen changing the song and you never see the "canceled" notice and don't hear the ding over the music. Suddenly you're headed straight into that 7 foot tall concrete wall without notice. Fortunately, I reacted to the sudden change in direction in time to get back into my lane. I was literally only a couple of inches from that wall at 78 mph. I had an immediate adrenaline rush and my hands were shaking for a long time after that. It took me a while to trust BCHF after that. I eventually did but learned to never take my eyes away from the road and the IP while using BCHF.

This is a situation that Ford needs to fix before someone gets killed. It should be easy for them to fix via software. And because of the danger of this it should give a very dramatic notification. It should be equivalent to the notification that the car gives when it notices an impending crash to the car in front. It should be red, flashing and very loud.

I'm hoping that this thread will get the notice of a Ford representative. Likely, Ford won't comment on this until they have a fix in place. Doing so would create a negligence liability issue for them.

In any event you have been warned. If you ever see anything orange pop up on your screen you should immediately grab controll of the wheel.

I’m of mixed thoughts on this. On one hand, I’ve always thought that the Mustang Mach E prompts requesting immediate driver action were too “subtle”, both audio and visual. On the other hand, if the prompts were more like those of a commercial aircraft (@Kamuelaflyer , please keep me honest ?), we’d have the car yelling the equivalent of “PULL UP! PULL UP!” and “TERRAIN! TERRAIN!”, and everyone would immediately be whining about the “incessant nagging” and looking for fuses to pull and software patches (look at the incessant whining that goes on right now about the eye monitoring camera ?).

On the ThIRD hand, I think the visual cues for BlueCruise Hands-Free are pretty prominent already - if the instrument panel is tinted blue, all is ok, if it’s NOT, the driver better be in control of steering (and of course, the driver is always paying attention to the driving environment, right? Right? They’re not wolfing down their triple Big Mac with extra cheese whiz, or rooting around in their Apple Music library, trying to find that song by Taylor that they MUST hear, RIGHT NOW!, right? Right? ?)

So, I’m not sure how big a concern this is?

Sponsored

 

[macchiaz-o]

So, I’m not sure how big a concern this is?

The issue is that cruise control shuts off without any grace period, and because of 1 pedal drive, the car begins decelerating rapidly. If there's a car following closely behind me, I hope they'll react quickly, too.

Yes, there are chimes and error messages popping up on the IPC, sometimes alternating between messages like "adaptive cruise control not available" or "lane keeping not available" or "driver monitoring system malfunction, clean sensor" or similar wording.

It's just bizarre that cruise control straight up suspends the set speed (and resumes one pedal drive levels of deceleration) just before all the error messages and chimes start. I have to very quickly get my foot back onto the go pedal, while my brain is shouting WTF! and my natural inclination is that something's gone wrong and I should probably get my foot on the brake. It's a stressful situation.

The second issue is that lane keeping suspends while hands free was fully active, which means I have WAY less than a second to regain control of the wheel especially while driving through a highway curve. This is contrary to the design of hands free driving, which calls for situations requiring hands back on to allow for a multi second graceful transition.

What's NOT happening in the situations @Chuck and I are describing is the big red Resume Control of Steering message or the high alert chime that would accompany that. Instead we're apparently experiencing unexpected, not properly accounted for failure state(s).

 

[Chuck]

Pretty sure EVERY time BCHF canceled lane centering and distance control still functioned.
Not sure what's going on with the OP.

Seems odd.

It completely ends Cruise control as if i pressed the button on the steering wheel. The set speed is grey with strike through font.

 

[Chuck]

As for version numbers, there's not a substantial difference between 1.3 and what your car may be operating under.

Agreed. I got this version last December and even though it may be a higher version number it's probably true that 1.3 has had major improvements in the ensuring months.

 

[Chuck]

When I see an unknown approaching curve, I pause bc and resume after the curve.

These are not unknown curves. And the cancelation isn't related to a curve, it could happen on and type of road, freeway or not. It's not a hands free issue, but it is a Blue Cruise issue.

 

[ARK]

I agree with OP, sometimes Blue Cruise handsfree drops out of Blue Cruise completely. In this situation, the car should freak out a bit more than it does to ensure it gets your attention.

For those in SoCal, in the past, I’ve reliably had it happen on the 210 when going east and crossing the interchange with the 605 while in the carpool lane.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

Agreed. I got this version last December and even though it may be a higher version number it's probably true that 1.3 has had major improvements in the ensuring months.

Submit a bug report using the voice feedback menu. It’ll get to the right people far faster than a port here. And yes, a complaint about the design choices is an appropriate use of the feedback feature.

 

[DesignMatters]

Driving in BC and treating it as "full auto pilot" and not just an "assist" is dangerous and d*mb.

I use it a lot, it is nice to have, and while using it my eyes are focused on the road as if I were driving and with one hand resting lightly on the wheel so if some sh*t does go wrong at 75 mph(110 ft/sec) I'm not losing precious fractions of a second reaching for the wheel and regaining my road situation focus to react. Using it any other way is dim and dangerous AF despite what the system allows one to do technically. Won't be "potentially deadly" if common sense and mature judgement is used. Full stop.

 

[Chuck]

Submit a bug report using the voice feedback menu. It’ll get to the right people far faster than a port here. And yes, a complaint about the design choices is an appropriate use of the feedback feature.

This is not a bug since it happens in other versions. It's more of a feature request but I should submit it.

 

[zvez]

I’m of mixed thoughts on this. On one hand, I’ve always thought that the Mustang Mach E prompts requesting immediate driver action were too “subtle”, both audio and visual. On the other hand, if the prompts were more like those of a commercial aircraft (@Kamuelaflyer , please keep me honest ?), we’d have the car yelling the equivalent of “PULL UP! PULL UP!” and “TERRAIN! TERRAIN!”, and everyone would immediately be whining about the “incessant nagging” and looking for fuses to pull and software patches (look at the incessant whining that goes on right now about the eye monitoring camera ?).

On the ThIRD hand, I think the visual cues for BlueCruise Hands-Free are pretty prominent already - if the instrument panel is tinted blue, all is ok, if it’s NOT, the driver better be in control of steering (and of course, the driver is always paying attention to the driving environment, right? Right? They’re not wolfing down their triple Big Mac with extra cheese whiz, or rooting around in their Apple Music library, trying to find that song by Taylor that they MUST hear, RIGHT NOW!, right? Right? ?)

So, I’m not sure how big a concern this is?

keep in mind we have people on the forum complaining of the "annoying" back up sound which is for pedestrian safety and also that the turn signal sound is too loud and thus annoying

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

This is not a bug since it happens in other versions. It's more of a feature request but I should submit it.

It’s an appropriate use of the function to call attention to what people perceive as a serious design flaw. It’s one of the uses for the feedback function. It’s also one of the responsibilities people using beta software have. Without that feedback the design and engineering teams can and will continue along their plotted course because no one told them otherwise.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

Agreed. I got this version last December and even though it may be a higher version number it's probably true that 1.3 has had major improvements in the ensuring months.

Yeah. The difference between BCHF 1.0 and BCHF 1.3 are far greater than 1.3 and the next proposed iteration of BC.

 

[electric-in-the-desert]

Now imagine, and I don't have to imagine because I experienced it, that BCHF cancels while on that curve while going 78 mph while you're looking at the infotainment screen changing the song and you never see the "canceled" notice and don't hear the ding over the music.

So overall I agree, the sound could be more prominent and it sounds like you should’ve gotten the more aggressive “Resume Control” message, instead of “canceled”. The resume control message is very loud and impossible to miss.

However the quoted part is a problem. You would’ve noticed the IPC change (which is quite dramatic with bright blue the giant words Hands Free), if you were paying attention to the road and not just had to rely on the chime. Remember with BC you are still legally driving the car and should be paying attention in an appropriate manor. Futzing with the infotainment during a high speed curve is not paying appropriate attention the road.

 

[medriver]

I'm sorry is this the first time that blue cruise has tried to yeet you into a jersey barrier? This happened like the first month I owned the car.

There is almost no benefit to blue cruise, I actually find it worse in some ways, because you are more slow to react to adverse road conditions with your hands off the wheel.

The feature can hardly be recommended outside of the most idealized driving conditions.

 

[BayPoodle]

I have noticed this and wondered about the design choice. Why is the Eye Nanny so loud and the notification that BC has disengaged so quiet?

Sponsored