NHTSA Investigation Opened on Ford Blue Cruise Fatalities

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is conducting a preliminary investigation of Mustang Mach-E electric vehicle crashes with Blue Cruise autonomous driving on freeways at night according to documents made public by the Office of Defects Investigations (ODI) today. The crashes which killed three people occurred when Blue Cruise was in use just before the collisions. What’s unclear is if the drivers were alerted in time by the system to avoid the crash? (see AutoInformed on: Ford Motor Establishes Latitude AI for Autonomous Driving)

More than 130,000 2021-2024 Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicles equipped with Co-Pilot360 Active 2.0 are covered by so-called PE24012 by the Office Of Defects Investigation PE24012 opened on 25 April 2024 by Joseph Teitelman, Peter Kivett and Tanya Topka at NHTSA.

NHTSA Summary

“The Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) has received notice of two (2) incidents involving Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicles that collided with stationary vehicles, which were located within the travel lanes of controlled-access highways. Both collisions occurred during nighttime lighting conditions, and each incident resulted in at least one fatality. The incident reports received by NHTSA were submitted under Standing General Order 2021-01 (SGO). ODI’s initial investigation of both incidents confirmed that BlueCruise was engaged in each of the subject vehicles immediately prior to the collision.

“Ford vehicles equipped with Co-Pilot360 Active 2.0 have a suite of driver assistance technologies including partial driving automation features that provide lane and speed maintenance with the expectation that the driver actively supervises the system’s performance. One such feature, BlueCruise, is only available on certain roadways and uses a camera-based driver monitoring system to determine driver attentiveness to the roadway. BlueCruise was introduced in model year 2021 and is currently available in a range of Ford and Lincoln vehicles.

“ODI has opened this Preliminary Evaluation to investigate the Ford BlueCruise system equipped on the subject vehicles. This investigation will evaluate the system’s performance of the dynamic driving task and driver monitoring. The SGO reports cited in the Opening Resume can be found in the investigation file at NHTSA.gov. under the following titles: SGO 2021-01 report ID: 502-7268 and SGO 2021-01 report ID: 502-7426.”

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