Oh, there's an easy improvement that could be added to BLIS. It would be really nice if there was a chime if the blinker was actived on the same side where the BLIS light is on. If this was done at speeds above, say 10 mph, this would be an audible warning that there's a car in the space when the drive is trying to change lanes.
I agree with this wholeheartedly!
When we were test-driving vehicles, one of them did just this, and after that, my opinion became "why don't all vehicles do it?"
We test-drove so many that day, that I forgot which had it, but one of them was a CX-9, and since someone else here mentioned that it had this exact setup, that was probably it.
The pieces to do this are all in place.
- The BLIS system is already sensing the presence of the vehicle in the blind spot (since the light in the mirror illuminates).
- The back-up system (CTA) already alerts you to when a vehicle enters the detection zones when backing up by sounding the chime and showing you a visual display on the backup camera view, so the chime warning interface already exists.
- The vehicle knows when you activate your turn signal and which one was activated.
I would love for this change to be implemented, even if it was an option that had to be enabled in a menu somewhere. I can't understand why it shouldn't be enabled by default, but I'm willing to go digging for it.
Is this an option in the service menus that can be accessed by the dealership, similar to the DRL option?
If not, is there an official process (that works) to go about adding such an option?
(I remember seeing a social site from Ford where suggestions could be made, but it was obviously not being monitored/curated by anyone from Ford that could do anything.)