Drivers in fatal Ford BlueCruise accidents may have been distracted before they happened

Two drivers involved in fatal crashes in 2024 while driving Ford’s hands-free BlueCruise vehicle may have been distracted before the accident, according to new information released Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

The safety agency released documents after each accident and announced it will hold a public meeting on March 31 in Washington, DC, where it will discuss its findings and possibly make recommendations to Ford. The NTSB is an independent agency that investigates transportation accidents but does not regulate the industry. The commission is expected to issue a final report next week on March 31.

The crash prompted an investigation not only by the NTSB, but also by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). NHTSA, which is the safety regulator, said in early 2025 that it determined that BlueCruise has limitations in “detecting stationary vehicles in certain conditions” and upgraded the research; The regulator sent Ford a comprehensive list of questions as part of the investigation June 2025which the company he answered in August. The investigation is ongoing.

Ford has maintained throughout that BlueCruise is a “simple feature” and that drivers will always be ready to take control of the car. Also he warns drivers that BlueCruise “is not a hazard warning or avoidance system.” New Ford car buyers can purchase BlueCruise for a one-time price of $2,495 or an annual subscription for $495, according to the company.

That said, the NTSB’s investigation — and a hearing later this month — shed more light on how companies like Ford talk about the purpose these driver assistance systems are supposed to serve and how they can ensure they’re being used properly.

Distracted driving is a topic that has come up in various other investigations into other popular self-driving systems such as Tesla’s now-retired Autopilot and its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) program. NTSB photos preliminary investigation in a 2018 death related to Autopilot it was more aware of distracted driving.

“In this accident we saw an overreliance on technology, we saw distractions, we saw the lack of a policy to ban cell phone use while driving, and we saw infrastructure failures, which, when combined, led to this tragic loss,” NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said at the time about the 2018 crash.

First damage

The BlueCruise crash occurred in early 2024. The first occurred in February of that year in San Antonio, Texas. The driver of a 2022 Ford Mustang Mach-E was traveling in the middle of Interstate 10 when he collided with a 1999 Honda CR-V at approximately 74 miles per hour. The Ford driver was using BlueCruise before the incident, which happened at 9:48 pm local time. The driver of the Ford suffered minor injuries, while the driver of the Honda died from injuries sustained in the crash.

New information released by the NTSB on Wednesday shows that Ford’s camera-based driver control system registered the driver’s gaze on the main infotainment screen five seconds before the crash. The driver’s monitoring system only detected him looking at the road for fractions of a second about 3.6 seconds before the crash, and about 1.6 seconds before the crash. He received two visual and audible signals to watch the road in the 30 seconds before the accident but did not brake before it happened.

The documents show that the driver told San Antonio Police that he had been using the vehicle to drive to a cash register. Another report stated that he “must have looked at the center of the screen because the directions to the launch pad were displayed there.”

It’s possible he was concussed before the incident, but it’s almost impossible to say for sure, based on the information released Wednesday. Ford’s system captured a still image of the driver two seconds before the crash, which the NTSB says shows him “sitting upright and facing forward, with his head resting (or nearly resting) on ​​the head and rotating to the right.” The driver obtained a lawyer after police questioned him, and the lawyer declined to speak to the NTSB.

Second damage

The second fatal BlueCruise accident occurred in March 2024 in Philadelphia. The driver of a 2022 Mach-E was traveling on Interstate 95 at 3:16 a.m. local time when he struck a 2012 Hyundai Elantra, which was stopped on the left side of the road. The Elantra struck a 2006 Toyota Prius parked in front of it.

The two drivers were friends and stopped for unknown reasons, and the driver of the Prius got out of his car and stopped to the left of the Elantra. Both drivers of the Elantra and Prius died, while the driver of the Mach-E suffered minor injuries.

The driver of the Mach-E, a 23-year-old woman named Dimple Patel, was drunk at the time, according to local police. By the end of 2024 he was charged with DUI homicide. He was traveling at an average speed of 72 kilometers per hour before the crash even though he was in a construction zone with a speed limit of 45 kilometers per hour. Zak Goldstein, Patel’s attorney, told TechCrunch on Wednesday that the case is still pending and that a trial date has not been set.

New NTSB records show that Patel’s driver’s monitor registered that his eyes were “on the road” for five seconds before the crash. But a photo taken two seconds before the crash appears to show him holding a phone above the steering wheel and almost out of sight of the driver’s control system.

Ford did not immediately respond to a request for questions about whether it is aware of the shortfall in its driver monitoring system, or whether the company has taken any steps to mitigate it.

What about automatic emergency braking?

Most modern Ford vehicles have forward warning (FCW) and automatic emergency braking (AEB), which is unique to BlueCruise.

In addition to warning that BlueCruise “is not an accident warning or prevention,” Ford also he warns owners clearly state that FCW and AEB are “driver aids” that are “supplementary,” and “do not replace the driver’s attention, judgment, and vehicle control.”

This could be because Ford sees real failures in the technology that supports these systems – including cameras and radar sensors.

The NTSB said in a separate report on the Texas crash that it had held meetings with Ford personnel about “AEB’s response to the proposed stop motion in this crash.”

Ford officials told the NTSB that, “(b) based on the limitations of the industry’s detection technology, and the nature of the vehicles, driving in close proximity to the environment, Ford cannot expect the current radar-camera fusion AEB system to detect and place a collision target with sufficient AEB confidence.”

To that end, the NTSB said in documents released Wednesday that neither vehicle system was involved in any of the accidents that occurred.