Ford’s BlueCruise hands-free system under investigation after fatal accidents

U.S. safety authorities have launched an investigation into Ford’s BlueCruise hands-free driver assistance system after it was found to have been activated in two recent traffic accidents in which several people were killed.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) said Monday it had confirmed that BlueCruise was active in both crashes. One of the accidents occurred in Texas in February and the other in Pennsylvania in early April. They are the first known deaths resulting from crashes in which BlueCruise was in use.

The investigation into the two crashes heightens attention on BlueCruise, which is currently available on the Mustang Mach-E and certain Ford F-150 (including Lightning), Explorer and Expeditions. The National Transportation Safety Board has already launched an investigation into the Texas crash. Ford said in a statement that it is “working with NHTSA to assist in their investigation.”

The new investigation comes just days after the ODI concluded its most high-profile investigation into driver-assistance systems to date. The safety agency first launched an investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot in 2021 after receiving multiple reports of Teslas colliding with stationary emergency vehicles while drivers were using Autopilot. Concluding the investigation, the ODI said last week that it had found a “critical safety gap between drivers’ expectations of (Autopilot’s) operational capabilities and the system’s actual capabilities” that had caused “foreseeable misuse and preventable accidents.”

Ford announced BlueCruise in 2021. It’s only available on pre-mapped highways, and Ford pairs it with a camera-based driver monitoring system that checks whether the driver’s eyes are still on the road when the system is active. This places much stricter restrictions on the system than Tesla imposes on Autopilot use.

And while BlueCruise is highly rated by some, including Consumer Reports, recent accidents and resulting investigations suggest there may be a more fundamental problem with driver-assist systems than some of these companies are willing to admit.

Note: This story has been updated to include a response from Ford.