Steering Wheel Torque Driver Monitoring Defeat Device - Testers Full

[Zprime29]

I don't get why the expensive breakout board is needed. If it's literally just pushing the button every 10s, why not just use an ESP32 and a servo? With some 3d printed parts, could do it for under $20 all in.

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[tgbuckner001]

Since it's not likely something I (myself) will want to sell for liability reasons and I'm not in it for the $$$ I'm not concerned with any IP. I'm using his board for the prototype:
https://copperhilltech.com/teensy-4-0-can-fd-and-lin-bus-breakout-board/

If you want to buy one, I'll send you the few other parts, program, and details on how to plug it into the truck,, it's super easy, takes about 5min.

If anyone else here is curious why not just stop here and give it to the community like this, it's because this device should cost less than $50,, maybe it's not worth it, maybe we just need to stick with the DIY approach since we all know someone would buy this and decide to take a nap on the highway

Im in. Please let me know how to get you reimbursed.

Correct, it brings up the dialog showing what the setting is, but doesn't actually adjust it. Some experience this behavior and some don't depending on the year and ICP firmware version, but I've come to actually see this as a plus. It reminds you that you're defeating something and it's not annoying at all when you consider how annoying the normal nag is and even 1 warning braking event is. That shit will give even a perfectly attentive person a heart attack, In fact I'll argue under oath that the rapid braking event is more dangerous than not nagging the driver, they should've just made the audio interruption stronger and/or did a slow deceleration for the ultimate disengagement.

Also, you still get all the other warnings same as always, still get disengagement warnings if it looses lines, and still get watch the road warnings if the camera isn't sure of what it's seeing or the road curves too extreme for the given speed. It's a very well designed system IMO and I'll bet you'll just want to do away with BC and use the LKA-Aid everywhere once you get it. But this is exactly the feedback I want, you're the perfect test candidate.

Im in, please let me know how to begin: [email protected]

 

[Free Charging]

Torque monitoring and braking to warn were definitely braindead decisions that make the truck less safe. A lot of paradigms that were implemented in the name of safety by legacy auto in a very legacy auto way are, honestly...

Interesting project. Would love to take a look.

Maybe someday we can build some physical Sync4 controls or get the front / 360 parking camera on at over 5 mph instead of forcing a touchscreen hunt in a parking situation where I am trying to use the cameras to be safety. List kind of doesn't end.

 

[transportkevin]

I've perfected a very simple defeat device for the absolutely stupid steering wheel torque driver monitoring for the Lightning (and all gen14 F150s). I and a few engineering friends have been using it for while and I'd like to get a few others to test it before I consider selling it.

I'll be 100% transparent here, all it is doing is pressing the distance follow button every 10sec.

So, if you want to see how the device will work in your truck, simply set the (non BlueCruise) cruise control with LKA-Aid Only enabled and press the distance follow button every 10sec. You will see that the LKA-Aid stays engaged and you don't get any nagging.

For those that will scream, "this is dangerous", "you shouldn't do this", etc... save it. If you don't want to do it, fine. Most people understand that they are still 100% responsible for their (and passenger's) safety and will defeat STUPID protections with responsibility because this is America. What I mean by STUPID is the method of using steering wheel torque to do driver monitoring,,,,,,, it's stupid. I'll go ahead and say this here b/c I know someone will want to comment, "why is it stupid". It's stupid because you have to literally fight the correct steering force to tell the truck you are present. All because Ford wanted to save a few $ on a sensor. Lightning Pro and most XLT's don't have a driver monitoring camera system because they don't have BlueCruise. So, they just chose to use steering torque to monitor the driver. There are other differences that are at play here too, but if your F150 has the distance follow button shown above that means you have a forward looking RF radar (Ford calls the CCM). All Lightning's have the same image processing hardware and camera for BlueCruise and are thus capable, isn't that crazy

So, without getting too deep in trim/feature weeds, if you have the distance follow button in your Lightning (or any gen14 F150) you can not subscribe to BlueCruise and simply install a defeat device to push the distance follow button every 10sec and essentially have BlueCruise for free with zero nag on any road. Does this mean you should use it hands free on a undivided highway at night while texting on your phone???? Absolutely NOT, but people shouldn't drink and drive either,,, so,, I'll say this again. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE for using and knowing the capability of any vehicle's ADASystem.

I've been using this for several months now and it's great. If you want to test it and or vent/agree how stupid using steering wheel torque is for driver monitoring, comment on this thread. I'd like 3 people who have had and used BlueCruise in the past to test this. I have never had BlueCruise so I'd like to get that perspective.

I have been using the ankle weight for a year. I would be interested in trying one.

 

[galightelec25]

I’m probably late to the conversation but I’d definitely pay for a product to get rid of the constant steering wheel turn requirement. Be happy to test it too!

 

[ZSC100]

I'm confused. You aren't going to sell it for liability reasons, but then you say you'll sell the parts?

I'm not sure yet, This seems tricky to navigate

Does it work on all roads? I mean gravel, roads and roads with no lines like the coma does. Or is this just limited to well-marked roads?

It's 100% the OEM ADAS solution just without the steering wheel torque nag, so, NO. it is nothing like Comma in that sense.

The "works on any road" comment is specifically relating to BlueCruise, The same image processor and machine vision model that is used for BlueCruise can be used on any road (with lines good enough for it to follow) with LKA-Aid. It essentially is the exact same as BlueCruise just without the semi-automated lane changes and since the same IMPA firmware does it all you still benefit from BlueCruise updates.

 

[RickLightning]

I'm not sure yet, This seems tricky to navigate

IANAL

Whether you sell a complete solution, or parts to someone, I would suspect a good lawyer would be able to hang liability on you.

I also suspect that by giving people a list of parts, that would also possibly hang liability on you.

IANAL, but I wouldn't touch either with a 10 foot pole if I were you, but I'm not you.

 

[LSUT1GER]

Count me in. I'm a heavy Blue Cruise user.

 

[ZSC100]

OK, I have 10 people asking. Let's cap it there and get some feedback in a few weeks before I decided how to proceed. It looks like there will be plenty of interest as suspected.

 

[Free Charging]

IANAL

Whether you sell a complete solution, or parts to someone, I would suspect a good lawyer would be able to hang liability on you.

I also suspect that by giving people a list of parts, that would also possibly hang liability on you.

IANAL, but I wouldn't touch either with a 10 foot pole if I were you, but I'm not you.

I am not a lawyer, but I would agree that selling a turn key kit or instructions on how to defeat a safety measure is probably creating exposure to tort liability.

But plenty of researchers build and document active bypass devices and get paid to do it.

I would guess that any paper or video of the research should be demonstrated only on private property, have adequate disclaimers, and be defensively focused on pressuring Ford to do safer monitoring, like they can with vision hardware. To be fair to OP, they focus on that in the original post, and they're correct; there's a lot of research that torque sensors are vastly inferior in terms of safety.

Publishing the research on it, and getting paid for putting in the time to do that is likely protected speech. But I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

 

[ZSC100]

I don't get why the expensive breakout board is needed. If it's literally just pushing the button every 10s, why not just use an ESP32 and a servo? With some 3d printed parts, could do it for under $20 all in.

Aesthetics and principle. It's certainly doable mechanically and that would be a very cool DIY and make for a good maker article, but you'd quickly find shortcomings. For instance a lot of the early Tesla defeat devices did simple digital low level inputs to the steering wheel controls. It was literally a $5 microcontroller that you placed beside the airbag in the steering wheel to push buttons in an automated manner. The problem with that is it doesn't know what the car is doing and just like what happened, Tesla pushed a software update and basically rendered them useless. Thousands of people paid $100+ for these and they just stopped working.

I don't think Ford is A: interested, or B: competent enough to intentionally see us doing this and program around it, but it is a possibility. The beauty of a module on the CAN-FD bus is that the possibilities are endless.

You can know anything about what's going on at any time with the truck. For instance I don't push the button virtually unless LKA is engaged and actively lane centering. You can essentially automate anything you want. You can keep LKA from automatically enabling when you enable cruise, this was a change Ford made in 2023 and people hated it, there were so many complaints, but now people are used to it. It's funny how we just learn to accept things that maybe 1 or 2 software engineers just thought one day, "this seems like a good idea, let's push it out to a million trucks" Remember all gen14 trucks have the same IMPA and ADAS MO. It's crazy how many owner frustrations this has caused and we'll never know, but how may owners just disable LKA-Aid instead of embrace and use it when, Honestly, for legacy OEM ADAS it's pretty amazing without the nag:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/XzsDCXKUbVG8LfjE6

 

[ZSC100]

IANAL

Whether you sell a complete solution, or parts to someone, I would suspect a good lawyer would be able to hang liability on you.

I also suspect that by giving people a list of parts, that would also possibly hang liability on you.

IANAL, but I wouldn't touch either with a 10 foot pole if I were you, but I'm not you.

Yea, I hear the crazy stories about Tesla owners suing Tesla b/c they defeated the driver monitoring, took a nap, or jumped in the back seat to film a YT video. It's a shame that anyone outside of the country can sell devices like this and have no worry that irresponsible use will come back to sue them. You've been able to buy defeat devices like this for Tesla on the non-US market for over a decade now.

That's why my first post was so detailed with what should be common sense. IANAL either, but as an engineer I've defended a few common sense products that were abused and I find that with traceable, honest, no ill intent disclosure about risks and responsibility a jury/judge will always side with the honest defendant. This is why I still have hope that a US company may actually want to sell this with the proper disclosures.

It's not about defeating a safety system, it's about fixing a terrible design that adds real value to an owner's experience in something they spent a lot of $$ on and a lot of their time in.

It's crazy how this played out. Ford built a truely decent ADAS system for its time, made a software change in 23 to force people to use/try it by automatically enabling it when cruise it set with no way to disable that behavior. Then because of their subscription model of BlueCruise caused the majority of owners to experience the terrible design of steering wheel torque driver monitoring when they either couldn't afford BlueCruise or their free trial expired. It's almost criminal honestly if it was intended to force subscriptions, but we'll never know.

 

[Zprime29]

You can know anything about what's going on at any time with the truck. For instance I don't push the button virtually unless LKA is engaged and actively lane centering. You can essentially automate anything you want. You can keep LKA from automatically enabling when you enable cruise, this was a change Ford made in 2023 and people hated it, there were so many complaints, but now people are used to it. It's funny how we just learn to accept things that maybe 1 or 2 software engineers just thought one day, "this seems like a good idea, let's push it out to a million trucks" Remember all gen14 trucks have the same IMPA and ADAS MO. It's crazy how many owner frustrations this has caused and we'll never know, but how may owners just disable LKA-Aid instead of embrace and use it when, Honestly, for legacy OEM ADAS it's pretty amazing without the nag:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/XzsDCXKUbVG8LfjE6

Ah, you aren't physically pushing it, just sending a signal to make the truck think it was pushed. I get it now, not worth it for me but watching out of curiosity.

 

[EVO]

I'm not sure yet, This seems tricky to navigate


It's 100% the OEM ADAS solution just without the steering wheel torque nag, so, NO. it is nothing like Comma in that sense.

The "works on any road" comment is specifically relating to BlueCruise, The same image processor and machine vision model that is used for BlueCruise can be used on any road (with lines good enough for it to follow) with LKA-Aid. It essentially is the exact same as BlueCruise just without the semi-automated lane changes and since the same IMPA firmware does it all you still benefit from BlueCruise updates.

Okay, since that's a step backwards from my coma I won't be interested on this one, but I'm sure there'll be a lot of people that don't have the coma that will be.

 

[RickLightning]

Okay, since that's a step backwards from my coma I won't be interested on this one, but I'm sure there'll be a lot of people that don't have the coma that will be.

Comma...

If you're driving in a coma, we have big problems.

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