Holiday Travel Made Easier with Ford’s Blue Cruise

The holiday travel season can either be joyful or painful. Dealing with traffic jams, impatient passengers, road works, and weather… can be quite the task. Ask yourself, how would you rather travel over the Holidays – or afterward? There is really one way to “fly” and enjoy the sights – behind the wheel of a Ford equipped with Super Cruise. 

BlueCruise can help turn holiday drive time into opportunities for connections, especially for those long trips and stop-and-go holiday traffic. When it is set, just take your hands off the wheel. Breathe. Keep your eyes on the road and the reminder to put your hands back on the wheel. It is better than fighting airports, train stations, and bus stations. The company’s not half bad, either. 

With thousands of miles of highways that are compatible with Blue Cruise, Ford ran some statistics to show how you are using this driver assistance technology. In particular, how you are using it during the holiday travel season. 

Some general statistics to start with. In 2023, Thanksgiving followed Labor Day as the holiday period with the most BlueCruise hands-free highway driving trips as folks hit the road to gather with family and friends. In 2024, AAA projected a record 71.7 million people traveled by car over Thanksgiving. That’s 1.3 million more travelers on the road – a marked uptick coming out of the COVID-19 Pandemic of a few years ago.   

Also, in 2023, BlueCruise usage among Ford owners increased 2.2 percent during Thanksgiving when traveling on highways with access to BlueCruise, compared to a non-holiday travel time period. 

The data shows that people are logging lots of hands-free highway miles during longer drives even though there are fewer overall trips. After all, there’s typically less commuting to work during those days when people are heading over the river and through the woods to their grandmother’s house.  

Overall, in 2023, U.S. customers used BlueCruise more than 50% of the time for hour-plus drives on controlled-access highways. Notably, around 77% of BlueCruise trips were under 20 minutes. That’s a lot of commutes – since the average commute time for U.S. drivers is 16-29 minutes, according to Statista Consumer Insights Global. In fact, 69% of Ford owners surveyed shared they planned to use BlueCruise on a road trip over the holiday travel season. 

Where would you use BlueCruise? According to statistics, more miles have been driven on interstate highways both north and south of our own state. Interstate 75 in Georgia and Interstate 40 in North Carolina rank among the highest usage of BlueCruise on all highways that are compatible with this system.  

However, you can use BlueCruise almost anywhere. On Interstate 26 to Asheville, North Carolina – you can do the trip hands-free over 94 percent of the way. The same percentage is available when traveling on Interstate 77 to Charlotte. It drops to 93 percent when you head down Interstate 26 to Charleston. If you’re headed to Atlanta on Interstate 20, you can do the trip hands-free for 98 percent of the way.  

When it’s the holidays or any time of year, know that your BlueCruise-equipped Ford will get you there without raising a finger to the steering wheel. But please be safe out there.  

To get your Ford with BlueCruise, contact us at Dick Smith Ford of Columbia to find out how it will work on your next vehicle.