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I had the occasion to drive a hands-free car, or rather a car with the possibility of hands-free driving under the correct conditions. A Ford product, specifically.

I got to drive one last year, and quite enjoyed Blue Cruise. This year, they made one noticeable upgrade to the Blue Cruise (BC) system and it is both better and worse. I have no idea how they refer to the versions, so I’m just going to call them the 2025 and 2026 versions.

The only thing I noticed was that the 2025 BC would change lanes for you but only if you initiated it by using the turn signal. Tap it so it blinks in the direction you want to go and it will check to make sure the lane is clear, change lanes for you, and then maintain that new lane. The 2026 version handles lane changes in the same way, but it will also decide on its own to change lanes if it wants to.

It is better because it drives more like it should – passing slower traffic on its own rather than needing your input. It is worse because it doesn’t always choose a good time to pass (like maybe let that guy coming up faster go by first), or necessarily do it well (like why are we still slowing down after we’ve moved into the fast lane? Once we move over let’s start accelerating). Maybe it will get better next year, but for now my suggestion to Ford is to have an option for BC so that people can turn off allowing BC to initiate lane changes on its own. It was way too trigger happy with the lane changes.

I much preferred the 2025 setup. I didn’t use the 2026 setup as much as I would have liked to, because I couldn’t trust it to not change lanes at the wrong time. I did end up using it more in low traffic situations, but turned it off when the traffic around us increased. It would have been nice to have an in-between setting because the 2025 setup would have been just fine.

I did notice some other things too. I happened to be using it when I saw a sign that said our lane would be ending, and I thought that would be a good test. So I did nothing and got to find out that BC doesn’t know what to do when the lane it’s in gradually ends. There was no traffic next to us, so it could have moved over. But what it did was just give up and told me to take over driving when it ran out of lane.

Another thing is that it doesn’t look for potholes. So it will stay in its lane just fine and your tires and suspension may pay a price. On the plus side, you can give it a quick steer to avoid an obstacle and it’ll cooperate with you. Besides, you are supposed to paying attention to the road anyway.

And the last thing is that there doesn’t seem to be any coordination between the nav system and BC. This was most obvious when we had to merge from one freeway to another. I was already in the right-hand lane. With the 2025 system it would have been all good. But the 2026 system noticed that we were going slower than my set speed, and the left lane was open, so it decided just before the exit to change lanes out of the exit lane. At the same time the nav system was telling me to be in the right-hand lane. Maybe the system isn’t ready to integrate turn-by-turn stuff with BC, but let’s start with small things like not making the driver’s job worse. If the nav system says to keep right, then just don’t initiate a lane change to the left.

One of the big draws of the new electric vehicles is their feature of one-pedal driving. This is like the cars at amusement parks that kids get to drive and steer, but the steering is limited to the rail that guides them around the track and the car slows down and stops once you let off the gas.

In the case of electric cars, the car can slow down and stop if you let off the accelerator pedal. A lot of people seem to like it, and it certainly helps prolong the life of the brakes.

But as I was driving my old gas-powered car around yesterday with a stuck parking brake, I realized that just about every car has a one-pedal driving feature.

Go ahead and try it. In my car I have a handbrake lever I pull up, but in the family minivan it’s a foot pedal on the far left that you press. Activate the park brake about halfway, then go drive around with just the gas pedal. On my car at least, it slowed down and came to a stop without having the press the brake pedal. It also held itself on a shallow hill.

The only downside is that it lowers fuel efficiency, which is the opposite effect of what it does in an electric or hybrid car. It also shortens the life of the brake pads (or shoes in my case).

But hey, you have one-pedal driving just like all the fancy people these days.

With a nice variety of winter weather lately, combined with a teenager with a new-ish driving permit, we as a family had some discussions during his drive in snow.

The phrase that came up was “turn into the spin”. That was an answer to what you’re supposed to do if you start to lose control of the vehicle.

The main problem with that phrase is that it is ambiguous. People have different ideas of which direction that is. Is that with the spin, or against the spin?

I told my new driver to forget that phrase and just point the wheels in the direction you want the car to go.

The other problem with that phrase is that it is a phrase. It won’t help you in an emergency because you need to think about it. The best way to prepare for an emergency is to practice it. So he’s going to practice it. Don’t worry, it’s a class given by professionals. But then his mind will know what to do.

Twice this last week, I noticed people signalling right-turn as they entered a roundabout that I also was approaching. Then they didn’t turn right but rather went straight through the roundabout (following the lane, of course).

That is one of the things that bugs me. Apparently some people are being taught to signal right when you’re entering a roundabout, and then signal again when you’re exiting a roundabout.

I don’t mind the signalling when exiting a roundabout, but it’s the “signal right when entering a roundabout” that’s the problem. These people are considering the road meeting the roundabout as an intersection. I consider the whole roundabout the intersection.

Here’s how I see it.

First up, a generic intersection :

This one doesn’t have any controls, so it’s at a high risk of people crashing. We need some way to coordinate who has the right of way. So we could make it a 4-way stop :

That’s better. Now if you were approaching this intersection and wanted to turn left, you would signal left and you approach it, and the car would cancel the signal after the turn was completed.

Everyone agree? Ok, now we’re going to change the traffic control method from stop signs to a traffic light :

Does that change anything if you want to turn left? I hope not. You would activate your left turn signal as you approached the intersection, and the car would cancel the signal after the turn was completed.

In each case, the control method inside the dashed box doesn’t matter. You have options for the intersection, so you signal as you approach the box to let people know which leg of the intersection you’ll be taking.

Now let’s replace the stop light with a roundabout :

I’m stating that it doesn’t change anything – you should signal left and you approach the intersection, and the car would cancel the signal after the turn was completed.

The problem with signalling right to enter the intersection is that people on the other legs of roundabout can’t tell the difference between that and signalling to take the first roundabout exit. It’s a bad idea.

It doesn’t add any information to the situation. The reason for signalling at intersections is to add information to the situation so that other drivers can make better decisions.

When entering a roundabout, everyone has to do the same thing – a slight right curve. Turn signals are to inform other people that you’re going to deviate from the current path, or to let them know which option you’re choosing when there are multiple options. When entering a roundabout, there are no multiple options (that’s one of the benefits of roundabouts) and you’re not deviating from a path. The path deviation should come when you exit, not enter a roundabout.

So the turn signal doesn’t add any information that’s needed. But it’s worse than that – it adds bad information. It causes confusion and delay, and that’s the worst thing that could happen, both here and on Sodor.

One caveat is that this is for roundabouts, not traffic circles. And it seems to me that whoever is teaching the signal right whenever entering a roundabout is someone who grew up with a traffic circle. Because those aren’t one intersection – they are big and are individual intersections around a circle.

I was driving yesterday on a freeway that I’m familiar with but haven’t driven in a while. The traffic report said there was a slowdown, so I knew to be ready for that.

Sure enough, there were some brake lights and both lanes slowed. The orange construction sign said “Left lane closed ahead – 2 miles”. I was in the left lane, so I decided to stay in the left lane and see if I could promote the zipper merge.

I stayed in the left lane. The next sign said “Left lane closed ahead – 1 mile”. Stayed in the left lane still. “Left lane closed ahead – 1/2 mile”. Still stayed.

Then the next sign (about T minus 1/4 mile) said to merge. It had no text, so I can’t type what it said, but it was the two lines getting closer picture. So I merged at that point, because that’s when the people setting up the construction zone said to merge.

There were people who merged into the right lane back when the first sign said “left lane closed ahead”. And people merged after that too.

And then there were people who didn’t merge when I did – they kept going in the left lane. And I wondered when they were going to merge. The 1/4 mile came and went, and there was no lane closure. Both lanes stayed open – there weren’t even any barrels set out on the side of the road.

Then I realized one of the benefits of waiting until the merge point to zipper merge, rather than merging at the first sign of an upcoming lane closure: if the lane isn’t actually closed, then you don’t cause unnecessary traffic slowdowns by filling up only one lane.

I wish I could have seen around the larger vehicle in front of me to see the lane never closed, before I merged right.

With some hot temperatures around here recently, I got to thinking about what people think is hot compared to what a car thinks is hot.

Actually the thought process started years ago during a trip to the Badlands. As the temperature was well over 100 (note all temperatures here will be in F not C), I was worried about the car. I knew I would be unhappy being in the sun (no shade in sight, and you can see a long way in that area of the country) with the temp being 105. And I wondered if the minivan was equally unhappy.

It’s easy to tell in general, because cars have a temperature gauge. As long as the needle stays in the middle of the gauge, everything is happy. But I have also learned that if the needle starts leaving the good zone, something is bad and it’s too late to do much about it other than turn off the engine.

But I’ve since realized that what we think are hot temperatures are not hot to the car. It was replacing a thermostat and radiator that helped me understand that. The thermostat was rated for 195 – that’s the normal operating temperature of the engine coolant.

My body’s thermostat, however, is around 98.6 degrees, about half that of the car. So although I’m in danger of overheating in 105 degree weather, the car is not. Going from 80 to 100 degrees is significant to people, but to a car that would feel like going from 40 to 50 degrees to us.

It’s like dog years – a car degree is half a people degree.

Recalling my thermodynamics class back in college: heat moves from the hotter object to the cooler object, like water flowing from a higher point to a lower point. Once the air gets above 98.6-ish, I’m not longer giving off heat, I’m absorbing it. But for a vehicle, that point is 195. And if the air temperature is even close to that we have bigger problems.

I wish I would have started working on cars earlier in life – it would have saved me a bunch of money. Here are some things I’ve learned over the last few years of working on my own cars.

• When replacing suspension components that involve removing sway bar links, plan ahead and get new sway bar links. This tip does not apply to places where cars don’t get rusty. But around here, sway bar links are considered single-use. They are designed to be able to be removed and re-installed, but that’s only in a perfect world. They’re cheap enough that it’s not worth my time to try to save them. I’ll give it one attempt to undo them, but if they don’t cooperate I just get out the angle grinder and off they go.
• Speaking of sway bar links (and other stubborn rusty connectors), a good tool to have is an impact wrench. It doesn’t loosen everything, but it has helped. And it helps tighten those sway bar links. I got a cheap electric one from Harbor Freight. I went with corded electric because I don’t have shop air and I don’t use it enough to make it worth managing batteries.
• The steering wheel on the van was wobbling. Slowly at low speeds and faster at higher speeds. That seemed like an easy diagnosis – one of the front tires broke a belt and is now out of round. So I swapped out the front tires (normal to winter or vice-versa) but the problem continued. I took it to the shop and told them what happened. It didn’t take them long looking at it to find it was a rear tire with the broken belt. Moral of the story: just because the symptom is in the steering wheel doesn’t mean the problem is in the front end.