The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has initiated a preliminary investigation into Ford Motor’s hands-free driving technology, BlueCruise, following two incidents involving Mustang Mach-E cars colliding with stationary vehicles.
The NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) opened the evaluation to probe BlueCruise, which offers partial driving automation while requiring the driver to actively supervise its performance.
Both collisions occurred during nighttime lighting conditions, resulting in at least one fatality in each incident. ODI’s initial investigation confirmed BlueCruise’s engagement in each vehicle right before the collision.
BlueCruise, available only on certain roadways, utilizes a camera-based driver monitoring system to assess driver attentiveness. The NHTSA’s investigation will focus on evaluating the system’s performance in dynamic driving tasks and driver monitoring.
Introduced in model year 2021 vehicles, BlueCruise is currently available in a range of Ford and Lincoln vehicles.
The NHTSA’s probe into Ford’s BlueCruise comes after a recent investigation into Tesla’s recall of over 2 million vehicles announced in December to install new Autopilot software updates. The NHTSA initiated the investigation following reports of 20 crashes involving vehicles with the new Autopilot software updates.
