NHTSA Launches Investigation into Ford BlueCruise After Fatal Crashes with Parked Cars

In a recent development, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has announced that it will be conducting an investigation into Ford Motor’s advanced driving technology known as BlueCruise. The probe comes after two fatal crashes involving Mustang Mach-E SUVs hitting parked vehicles while operating with the hands-free system. According to NHTSA, 130,000 models from 2021 to 2024 of this specific vehicle model fall under this initial investigation to determine whether they pose an unreasonable risk to safety. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has also launched separate investigations into both incidents that involved a Ford Mustang Mach-E using BlueCruise in San Antonio, Texas and Philadelphia respectively. Both crashes occurred during nighttime lighting conditions as confirmed by NHTSA’s initial investigation.
Ford stated it is cooperating with the regulatory agency to support its examination. The system employs a camera-based driver monitoring technology that checks attentiveness while driving on 97% of highways in both Canada and the United States, without any intersections or traffic signals. BlueCruise was introduced last year and can be found across Ford’s range of vehicles including Lincoln models as well.
The NHTSA investigation will scrutinize two major aspects; how efficiently it handles dynamic driving tasks, along with its driver monitoring mechanism which determines if drivers are focused while the technology is being used or not. This move comes after last week’s announcement by NTHSA regarding Tesla’s recall of over 2 million vehicles to install new Autopilot software updates aimed at addressing user attention concerns. Following that decision, a fresh probe was opened by the agency into whether Tesla adequately resolved this issue with its most recent automobile upgrades which came in December after an uptick in accidents involving cars equipped with these features. NHTSA revealed it received reports of 20 collisions as a direct consequence of updated software on affected vehicles, resulting in at least thirteen fatalities where the misuse by drivers seemed to be apparent factors contributing towards those incidents’ causes.