Blue Cruise freeways???

[vicrider 0]

In reading about the Ford F150 all electric truck coming out next spring it offers "Blue Cruise Technology". It states that there are 100,000 miles of Blue Cruise Freeway in the states at this time. Since when? Where are they? How do they differ from any other limited access freeway? My wife's Suburu will auto correct lane drift, warn of blind spots, cruise pace traffic ahead, slow down and speed up as traffic does, panic stop if called for. Her car is NOT listed for Blue Cruise Highway driving completely letting go of wheel. In fact the car will audibly warn to get your hands back on the wheel and mind your driving.

So, anyone have a Blue Cruise car or truck and are there any Blue Cruise registered highway sections in your neighborhood?

[Poopdeck 0]

My wife’s Subaru has the safety features and we hate them. Enough to where we are considering dumping the car with less than 3K on it. We like everything else about the car but the safety features really suck and you can’t turn all of them off. Smart car technology just isn’t there yet but that’s not stopping car makers to roll it out. 
 

blue cruise is just a Ford thing. There are no high tech roads built with blue cruise. Blue cruise is nothing more than a divided highway with some geofencing set up by Ford on a computer. Not sure where they set up the geo fence but they should have it listed somewhere. 

[skeet3t 0]

First, it will be a cold day in the hot place before I buy an electriic vehicle or even a hybrid. What would it cost me to have a charging station installed? 

Second, they put hundreds of dollars of crap  on safe cars but not one penny is spent on making a safe driver. I figure I could work as a traffic officer in our bypass. with 10% commission on citations, I could make $100K a year.

As Forrest Gump said, That's all I'm going to say about that.

[Steeldrifter 0]

On 8/9/2021 at 7:36 AM, skeet3t said:

Second, they put hundreds of dollars of crap  on safe cars but not one penny is spent on making a safe driver.

100% with ya on that. I'm serious when I say I honestly hate to even get out of the house anymore these days simply because of the stupid way people drive. Some of the stuff I see people doing makes me wonder if an IQ test for a license is in order. Prime example today ...I went for a short bike ride, waited for the crosswalk signal to turn for me to cross, thank God I pay attention FOR idiots driving because the cross walk for me had switched to "cross" for at least 5-6 seconds when some jack$$$ turned left against a red light without even paying attention to the red light nor me crossing. Anymore you have to spend 50% of your time on the road paying attention for other people!

[Poopdeck 0]

7 hours ago, Steeldrifter said:

100% with ya on that. I'm serious when I say I honestly hate to even get out of the house anymore these days simply because of the stupid way people drive. Some of the stuff I see people doing makes me wonder if an IQ test for a license is in order. Prime example today ...I went for a short bike ride, waited for the crosswalk signal to turn for me to cross, thank God I pay attention FOR idiots driving because the cross walk for me had switched to "cross" for at least 5-6 seconds when some jack$$$ turned left against a red light without even paying attention to the red light nor me crossing. Anymore you have to spend 50% of your time on the road paying attention for other people!

Your a brave man. I started riding my bike again and learned bike riding is way more dangerous than I remember.  The number of people glued to their cell phones while driving is incredible. I only ride my bike in my neighborhood as leaving the neighborhood is to harrowing. One day technology will correct this but it’s not there yet and I would recommend to everybody to stay away from all active safe driving features at the present time. 

[vicrider 0]

Okay, you guys with bicycles (talk about morphing a thread) just think about the hundred thousand plus miles my wife and I have on motorcycle riding around the country before my health put my on my motor scooter. We traveled with the bike and often pulling a trailer and a camper behind. I never had a crash in all those years or miles but have seen too many of them and the only way to stay alive in a bike of any kind is to have eyes in the back of your head and always anticipate a driver in a cage doing something that is going to get you hurt or killed. The other thing I always did is anticipate my "OUT" in any situation before I needed it and there were times I did need it. You guys on bikes with or without a motor remember that losing the steel cage around you turns you invisible to many drivers. It's our "cloak of invisibility" to them.

And I sincerely hope that driverless cars reach a true safety factor that will take the stupid factor out of the highway travel. One of the things I got to do when I worked at MN/dot was run a program that modeled interchanges on the computer. It was based on years of highway studies and you laid out your intersection design and then brought various degrees of traffic into it. The program had little green cars, a few yellow cars, and a red car would put up now and then in modeling. As you'd expect green cars were basically decent drivers (like us) and traffic counts and movement could flow fine with them. Those yellow cars were careless, aggressive of on the phone and disrupted traffic in various ways you could calculate. Then the red car. Oh yeah that red car. He was the one who'd hit you on your bike, cut you off. blow the red light, and all too often end up in a crash or worse just causing one. The program was fun to run, like a video game that let us anticipate the changes in traffic flow if we added a free right turn lane, a safety island, altered the traffic light sequence at different times of the day, and gave us a good idea of what we could benefit traffic with before we went out and built it.

[skeet3t 0]

I can top that.

1. My father and I were returned from the Carolinas and turned off 285 in north Atlanta onto 75 north. After a few minutes, Dad remarked, "You have to believe in God." I wondered what brought on this theological discussion. "I asked, What?" He replied, "The way some people drive, Someone has to be watching over them.

2. Coming up I-75 out of Atlanta, I was in the second lane from the left. I noticed a red sports car behind me. Follow me here: he passed me in the far left lane, got past me by about three car lengths, then shot across five lanes and exited. Ah, meshuggah!

[skeet3t 0]

Got interrupted by a glitch in my server.

Driverless cars? Until someone hacks into the system as happened to the pipeline. Anyone had a computer crash? Instead of a person driving the car, we have a computer that is susceptible to all kinds of glitches. I just spent 30 minutes on the phone with the CSR for my email. Electronics? Sorry but I don't trust them.

The "stupid factor" can be taken out if the laws are enforced with real big fines. Our bypass is either 45 or 55 mph. The signs seem to be a mere suggestion. No one pays any attention to them. At 10% commission on fines, I could make over $100K a year...until people watched the speed limits.

[vicrider 0]

Won't work skeet. One summer in MN the Highway Patrol set up regular rotating stings on alternating freeways. One cop with a radar gun and half a dozen on an on ramp ready to go. They would nail a bunch of speeders, go back and do it again. The old adage that if you're all speeding you're okay didn't work in that situation...they got you all. What effect did all those tickets and stings do? Nothing. Traffic sensors showed people were still speeding within a couple of blocks of the sting operation.

I agree about all the computers on cars being a liability. One show I watched showed how they can be hacked and take over a person's accelerator (fly by wire) and steering while they're driving. Kind of scary and no matter how many firewall safeguards are put on computer systems hackers still find there way in the backdoor somehow. When they can hack the Pentagon you know you're not all that safe.

[skeet3t 0]

I drove from Cleveland, OH to Hazelton, PA back in the late 80s. The state put big signs along the I-80 showing the fines which went up to over $300, depending on how much you were over the posted speed limit. Anyone in PA care to share the latest? It will work when you start hitting people in the wallet. I was in sales for a number of years. One evening there was nothing on TV so I made a spreadsheet with the left column listing speeds from 50 mph to 80 mph in 5 mph increments. The top column was distances from 35 miles to 600 miles in 25 mile increments. You have to drive real fast for a long distance to make up 15 minutes. That is keeping a constant speed and not taking into consideration traffic and changes in speed limits which everyone ignores. I had a Chrysler convertible pass me around Mile 60 on I-75 north. I was just a hair over 70. The car had to be going at least 80-90. What was hilarious, they passed me again around Mile 373 or 374!!! By all rights, I should have never seen them again. I had a car pass me about Mile 17 on north I-75, flying like he was going to be late. I counted when he got off Exit 20 and beat me by an amazing 37 seconds! If people would slow down, their insurance rates would be lowered. Who would have guessed?

[vicrider 0]

On 8/12/2021 at 9:43 AM, skeet3t said:

 I had a Chrysler convertible pass me around Mile 60 on I-75 north. I was just a hair over 70. The car had to be going at least 80-90. What was hilarious, they passed me again around Mile 373 or 374!!! By all rights, I should have never seen them again.

Been on many long trips over the years and been on both ends of that situation. People pull off to eat, then get back freeway and pass you again, or vice versa. One of the funniest ones was on one motorcycle I had that at 80-85 mph needed gas almost every hundred miles. On the way from OK to MN on I35 I passed a trucker with bike decals on his truck. Waved at him and he smiled down. Got gas, back on freeway at 85, passed him again and we both laughed. Somewhere in IA we lost each other but with gas stops and blasting off again on freeway I must have passed him about four times as he chugged along at a consistent 65-70 and I smoked him at 85 or so until I had to stop for gas. 

[skeet3t 0]

Driving over 90 probably shot their gas mileage! I learned years ago that driving over the speed limit isn't worth the extra fuel consumption and wear-and-tear on the vehicle, especially the brakes. I covered NC and SC in the early 70s. Before a lot of the interstates were completed, I found that if I averaged 45 mph between calls, I was doing good. I would check the mileage between towns and figure from  there.