Ford’s BlueCruise Comes First In Driver Assistance Ratings As Tesla’s Autopilot Falls To 7th Position

Ford’s BlueCruise comes first in Driver Assistance ratings (ADA system) as Tesla’s Autopilot falls to 7th position.

Ford BlueCruise came out on top, followed by Cadillac Super Cruise and Mercedes-Benz Driver Assistance.

Autopilot fell from its second-place showing in 2020 to seventh because its basic functionality hasn’t changed much.

An Active Driving Assistance (ADA) system includes Blind Spot Detection, Lane Departure Warning and Pedestrian Warning with Braking, and of the 12 systems Consumer Reports just finished testing, Ford BlueCruise came out on top, followed by Cadillac Super Cruise and Mercedes-Benz Driver Assistance.

Ford’s hands-free highway driving feature, BlueCruise, are designed to take over the car’s steering, braking, and acceleration while the driver travel down the highway.

“Systems like BlueCruise are an important advancement that can help make driving easier and less stressful,” says Jake Fisher, CR’s senior director of auto testing.

“But they don’t make a car self-driving at all,” Fisher says, adding that :

“Instead, they create a new way of collaboratively driving with the computers in your car. When automakers do it the right way, it can make driving safer and more convenient. When they do it the wrong way, it can be dangerous.”

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This time around, Tesla, once an innovator in ADA with its Autopilot system, fell from its second-place showing in 2020 to seventh because it hasn’t changed Autopilot’s basic functionality much since it first came out, instead just adding more features to it, says Fisher.

“After all this time, Autopilot still doesn’t allow collaborative steering and doesn’t have an effective driver monitoring system. While other automakers have evolved their ACC and LCA systems, Tesla has simply fallen behind.”

Ford’s BlueCruise and General Motors’ Super Cruise, the two ADA systems that CR rated highest, use direct driver monitoring systems (DDMS) that require drivers to keep their eyes on the road while the systems are automating steering, acceleration and braking.

Both systems point infrared cameras at driver faces and sound an alert if the driver stops paying attention to the road – even if just for a few seconds. If drivers don’t turn their eyes back to the road, the system soon begins to slow the car.

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