Ford hands-free tech faces probe after fatal crashes

Federal investigators have launched a probe into Ford’s hands-free Advanced Driver Assistance System, Blue Cruise.

The move, by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), comes just a couple of weeks after it emerged that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was looking at two fatal incidents involving Ford Mustang Mach E models fitted with the technology.

Now the NHTSA has stepped in with an Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) into the same two accidents.

The ODI will aim to establish to what extent Blue Cruise was involved in the accidents and “evaluate the system’s performance of the dynamic driving task and driver monitoring.”

The two crashes in question took place in San Antonio, Texas and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

On both occasions, a Mustang Mach E operating Blue Cruise ran into a stationary vehicle, causing one fatality in Texas and two in Pennsylvania.

According to documentation published on the NHTSA website to accompany the ODI, the stationary vehicles “were located within the travel lanes of controlled access highways” and the incidents “occurred during nighttime lighting conditions.”

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