The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has initiated an inquiry into Ford Motors’ BlueCruise hands-free driving technology, following two fatal collisions in which Mustang Mach-E SUVs hit parked vehicles. The safety agency will investigate the first 130,000 Ford Mustang Mach-E SUVs produced between 2021 and 2024 to determine whether these vehicles pose an unacceptable safety risk.
Ford assured it was cooperating with NHTSA to tackle the issue. Meanwhile, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has launched two independent investigations into the two crashes involving the Mustang Mach-E. In a fatal incident on February 24, a 2022 Mustang Mach-E using BlueCruise tech rammed into the rear of a stationary Honda CR-V on Interstate Highway 10 in San Antonio, Texas. On March 3, another Mach-E crashed in Philadelphia.
NTHSA revealed that its preliminary inquiry did prove that BlueCruise had been operating before the collision in Philadelphia. The two lethal accidents happened at night, as per the agency’s statement. Ford has had an advanced hands-free driving system called BlueCruise operational on 97% of US and Canadian highways devoid of intersections or traffic signals. The system installs a camera-based driver monitoring system which measures driver’s alertness.
The study by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will be carried out among Mach-E cars with Co-Pilot360 Active Feature 2.0 as a package. The BlueCruise tech was introduced in 2021 and is available in some Ford and Lincoln models. In addition, NHTSA noted that the investigation will also probe the performance of the system in relation to its dynamic drive tasks abilities and driver’s watchfulness.
In a separate development, NHTSA recently launched a probe into the adequacy of a Tesla recall announced in December, involving more than two million vehicles, to install new Autopilot software updates. This inquiry follows reports of 20 crashes involving vehicles equipped with the updated Autopilot software, with at least 13 fatalities attributed to foreseeable misuse of the system.