The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating Ford’s BlueCruise driver assistance system after two collisions killed three people, amid separate investigations into the fatal crashes.
An initial investigation confirmed the driver assistance was engaged prior to the collisions, a U.S. ... [+]
There were two separate cases of Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicles colliding with stationary vehicles “during nighttime lighting conditions,” according to an April 25 notice, resulting in three fatality and two injury reports.
An initial investigation confirmed that the BlueCruise driver assistance system was engaged in the vehicles “immediately prior” to the collisions, according to the notice.
The agency will now evaluate more than 130,000 Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicles from model years 2021 to 2024 equipped with Co-Pilot360 Active 2.0, a driver assistance technology package equipped in some vehicles—which BlueCruise is a feature of—according to the notice.
Regulators will be evaluating the system’s “dynamic driving task” and driver monitoring capabilities, the NHTSA said.
Ford told Forbes it is “working with NHTSA to support its investigation.”
Autopilot systems have been subject to increasing regulatory scrutiny in recent years, in particular Tesla’s. Ford’s BlueCruise system, which was launched in 2021, can only be engaged on certain roadways and monitors driver attentiveness using a “camera-based driver monitoring system,” according to the NHTSA, and Ford has said it is not fully autonomous. The NHTSA opened separate investigations into the Ford Mach-E crashes, which occurred on February 24 and March 3. The fatal February collision was the first known crash involving Ford’s driver assistance technology to receive attention from federal regulators, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The NHTSA announced a probe into Tesla’s handling of an Autopilot system-based recall on Friday. The agency is investigating whether the electric vehicle maker properly handled its December recall of more than 2 million vehicles to fix an error with its Autopilot system.
US Investigates Tesla Recall After ‘Post-Remedy Crash Events’ (Forbes)
Ford’s Assisted-Driving Technology Under Scrutiny as U.S. Probes Fatal Texas Crash (The Wall Street Journal)