Upgrading to Blue Cruise & First Major Road Trip w/ Blue Cruise

DarkSkyForever · Jul 12, 2022

I picked up my truck last night and used Blue Cruise most of the way back home (350ish miles).

It worked fairly well, I had to take over for it on 50% of overpasses and many on ramp/off ramp areas. Outside of that, it did well. I noticed on several sections of road that had a very slight curve, the truck would "bounce" between the lines ever so slightly.

Aim64 · Sep 10, 2022

YzermanTopShelf said:
Hi everyone,

I just finished my first big road trip with Blue Cruise and thought I’d share my experience. My truck is a Job 1 build, so it came with all the hardware but not the software for Blue Cruise. Getting the software updated took some persistence. I joined the Early Access Program but had issues with one of the updates. I took it into my dealership and they were absolutely zero help. I also joined the Advanced Analytics Program, which gives Ford permission to track everything I do with the truck. Once my dealer wasn’t helpful, I reached out the people running the EAP and asked for help. The support person was responsive but didn’t appear to be deeply technical, so I escalated my situation. I was then connected with the product manager for EAP and she was great - got engineering involved, figured out my problem and scheduled a Ford tech to come to my dealership the next day. The Ford tech told the dealership to update all my software due to an issue with OTA updates. Not surprisingly my dealership screwed that up and didn’t update all the modules. Again the product manager was super helpful and got the rest of my modules updated over OTA. I now have Blue Cruise!

For the last month or so, I’ve only used it a couple times for short freeway trips. I work from home and live in a San Francisco, so I mostly use the truck for road trips.

Yesterday was the first big road trip: 860 miles - SF to Tucson.

I started the trip by going over the Bay Bridge and Blue Cruise wasn’t available. Oddly I kept getting “Watch the road” alerts even though Blue Cruise wasn’t available and I was only using Lane-Keeping. I’ve never gotten “Watch the road” alerts when using Lane-Keeping, just the alerts to put my hands on the wheel. I found this slightly annoying because I kept getting the alerts even though I’d actually be looking at the road. I tried to turn off Blue Cruise completely in hope that the “Watch the road” alerts would go away. From the Cruise Control menu I disabled “Lane Centering with Hands-Free” but that didn’t disable the “Watch the road” alerts. From what I can tell, the monitoring of your face/eyes is done with both Blue Cruise and Lane-Keeping. That is definitely a change from pre-Blue Cruise and one I do not like. I also tried disabling "Driver Alert" in the Drive Assistance menu, but that didn't have any effect on the “Watch the road” alerts. I don't really know what that does.

Throughout the drive I got a lot of false-positive “Watch the road” alerts. I’d be looking directly at the road and it would go off multiple times. I also found that the alerts were overly sensitive. It would go off when I was checking my side mirrors or briefly looking at the map to know where to turn. I don’t know how heavily the government regulates these safety mechanisms, but there is a lot of room for improvement. My guess is that Ford has made this decision irrespective of the Federal government since other car makers (e.g. Tesla) are not as aggressive at monitoring the driver.

The route I took was interstate-5 to southern California, then interstate-210 and finally interstate-10 to Tucson. Pretty straightforward drive. Blue Cruise worked for most of the drive (on interstates). It would randomly cut out for short periods and I couldn’t really figure out why. Not sure if there are (very) small portions of these interstates where it isn’t supported or if some environmental conditions were causing the pauses. Besides the “Watch the road” alerts, I found that it worked quite well and definitely made the drive easier.

Couple observations:

From the time I enable Blue Cruise/Lane-Keeping to the time it becomes active is longer than it took for Lane-Keeping to turn on pre-Blue Cruise. Maybe it is designed to try and enable Blue Cruise first and then only enables Lane-Keeping once Blue Cruise fails.

It is my experience that Lane-Keeping is better at steering through turns than Blue Cruise. I don’t know how much the two systems overlap (maybe not at all?), but I’ve found turns where Blue Cruise fails - literally crossing the lane, while pre-Blue Cruise, Lane-Keeping handled the same turn no problem. In general Blue Cruise bounces in the lane more than Lane-Keeping. I find Lane-Keeping tracks a tighter path in the lane than Blue Cruise.

I’m very curious how Ford is planning to mange the user experience between Lane-Keeping and Blue Cruise. Ideally the two systems play nicely together and it is easy to pick which one you prefer. For example, my wife will probably never use Blue Cruise. She isn’t comfortable taking her hands off the wheel. But it wasn’t obvious to me how I could disable Blue Cruise. Even after disabling “Lane Centering with Hands-Free” I still got the “Watch the road” alerts. Maybe that is as designed, but it definitely wasn’t how Lane-Keeping worked previously. I’d prefer “Watch the road” alerts were disabled when Blue Cruise is disabled. I'd also prefer that there was a very clear menu option - “Disable Blue Cruise”. I also wonder what the user experience will be like if your truck has Blue Cruise, but do not subscribe to it - will Lane-Keeping still work? What will the menu options look like? Will it still monitor your eyes?

In the end, I like Blue Cruise and I’m hopeful that they will continue to improve it. When comparing it to Lane-Keeping, I’m not 100% sure I’d pay for Blue Cruise. It isn’t that big of an upgrade over Lane-Keeping, especially since Lane-Keeping does a better job holding the lane through turns. My biggest ask is that Ford sort out the “Watch the road” alerts. These should not be on when using Lane-Keeping and need to be tuned for fewer false positives when using Blue Cruise. It would also be nice if the alerts worked like the hands on steering wheel alerts - no sound w/yellow warning to start and then a beeping with red warning. Because the “Watch the road” alerts are so aggressive and beep immediately it makes them very annoying - and woke up my daughter from her nap, which is never a good idea

I have a 21 Platty. Got Blue Cruise updated in June through the dealer. I had to get a new APIM.
I really like the Blue Cruse , and have used it many times on parkways and interstates .
Waiting for BlueCruise 2.1 update, which will allow lane changes, better stability in turns, and keep the truck away from Semi’s
The issue you are having with Watch the Road , I also get them but very few.
I think the 2.1 update will probably improve the items that are annoying.
BTW , if you want to bypass the speed limit setting , all I do is use the gas pedal to get to the speed and then the truck will maintain that speed. Even after it sees another speed limit sign. Only had it drop down to a lower posted speed once.