The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the US federal road safety agency, announced on April 29 the opening of an investigation into Ford and its autonomous driving system, BlueCruise. The agency's Bureau of Investigation confirmed that this technology was active in two fatal accidents, which occurred in February in Texas and earlier this month in Pennsylvania in “nighttime lighting conditions”.
A “preliminary assessment” to determine the risks
The BlueCruise autonomous driving system launched in summer 2021 in the US, before arriving in the UK last year. Hands-free technology works on 97% of North America's highways without intersections or traffic lights. It manages the pace and centering of the vehicle on the lane, and uses a driver monitoring system based on an infrared camera to assess their level of attention.
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The NHTSA investigation focuses on vehicles equipped with Co-Pilot 360 Active 2.0, a driver assistance package including BlueCruise, such as the Mustang Mach-E or the F-150 Lightning. The agency indicated that it was opening a “preliminary assessment” on Mustang Mach-E vehicles marketed since 2021, to determine whether they present an unreasonable risk to health.
At the same time, the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB), the American body responsible for investigating accidents, announced the opening of two separate investigations into accidents involving Mach-Es. In both cases, the SUVs hit vehicles parked on the hard shoulder.
Tesla under new investigation
In 2021, the NHTSA also opened an investigation into Autopilot, Tesla's autonomous driving system. Several accidents, some of which were fatal, had been observed, with Teslas hitting vehicles parked on the emergency lane. Elon Musk's company recalled 2 million vehicles at the end of last year to correct security flaws in its Autopilot.
In closing the investigation last week, NHTSA said it observed a “critical safety gap between drivers' expectations of Autopilot's operating capabilities and the system's true capabilities”. It has opened a new investigation to determine whether the recall fixes on Autopilot are effective enough.
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The opening of the investigation comes a few days after the arrival in the United States of the first level 3 autonomous driving system, entitled Drive Pilot and signed Mercedes-Benz. Unlike the systems offered by Tesla and Ford, level 2, the driver is no longer responsible for driving and becomes a passenger. He can, theoretically, divert his attention from the road, but must be able to regain control of the vehicle at any time. In addition, this system can only be used on certain sections of motorways, and not above 60 km/h.
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