BlueCruise offers semi-autonomous driving on parts of the UK motorway network
Hands-off driving is now legal in the UK as Ford becomes the first car maker to offer semi-autonomous cruising on 2300 miles of British motorways – the first country in Europe to allow such a move.
Offered as a £17.99 monthly subscription for 2023-model-year Mustang Mach-Es, BlueCruise is level two-plus autonomous technology (a new, semi-official classification). The system allows drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel while the car drives itself in designated, premapped ‘Blue Zones’ (which include the M25 and the M40), following approval from the Department for Transport.
The new BlueCruise technology – launched in parts of the US and Canada last year – works as an add-on to Ford’s current Intelligent Adaptive Cruise Control (IACC) and will take over when entering these zones with IACC active. Drivers will be alerted when they can remove their hands from the wheel.
Like IACC, BlueCruise will keep pace with other vehicles (up to the set speed and to a limit of 80mph), slow down with traffic and adjust speed depending on road signs.
The new tech builds on this, with predictive speed assistance when approaching a sharp curve, and ‘human-like’ lane positioning that drivers “tend to do intuitively”, says Ford, such as “subtly” shifting away from larger vehicles – like lorries – in adjacent lanes.
Unlike its US counterpart, however, the UK’s BlueCruise will need a driver’s steering input to change lanes.
BlueCruise has been dubbed ‘hands off, eyes on’ because the system will still require the driver’s attention to be on the road, unlike the fully autonomous level-three technologies, with which a car can take over entirely in certain situations. Level two-plus means the driver must remain ‘in the loop’, while the car controls the driving functions.
BlueCruise uses an infrared camera to monitor the driver’s concentration levels, and the self-driving mode will shut off and even bring the car to a gradual stop if the driver fails to respond to alerts when the sensor believes they are distracted.
This is similar to Tesla’s semi-autonomous Autopilot system (which is available in the US and other non-European countries), but Ford’s BlueCruise includes further safety systems, such as the eye-tracker and a limit to the roads on which the technology can be used.
Ford’s Europe boss Martin San
