Ford BlueCruise faces NTSB scrutiny following 2 fatal crashes

Readers have called me a Luddite, and worse, for questioning the safety of automated vehicles in the past, despite growing visual evidence that there are plenty of kinks left to be worked out, so the National Transportation Safety Board’s latest findings on vehicle automation are particularly eye-opening.

On Tuesday, the NTSB held a meeting to discuss fatal crashes involving Ford’s hands-free driver assistance tool, BlueCruise, and also commented on fully automated technology, recommending standardized performance requirements and greater oversight to “improve the safety of automated vehicle technology.”

The meeting centered on two fatal crashes where Ford BlueCruise was engaged and failed to stop for stationary vehicles. In one February 2024 San Antonio incident, a Ford Mustang Mach-E traveling on I-10 slammed into a disabled 1999 Honda CR-V in the center lane.

The vehicle in front of the Ford, driven by a human, narrowly avoided a collision with the Honda, but the second vehicle wasn’t so lucky. The Ford struck the Honda at about 75 mph as neither the driver nor BlueCruise applied braking or steering to avoid the crash. The Honda driver was killed while the Ford driver sustained minor injuries, which, considering the pictures from the crash, was a minor miracle.

In March 2024, another Ford Mustang Mach-E was traveling in the left lane on I-95 in Philadelphia near the Betsy Ross Bridge. The speed limit in this section of road was reduced to 45 mph from 55 mph due to construction. Again, Ford’s advanced driver assistance system did not avoid two stationary cars, slamming into them at 72.4 mph and causing a four-car crash between the Ford, the two stopped vehicles, and a Toyota that was traveling in the center lane.

The drivers of the two stopped vehicles died in the crash, and once again, the Ford driver miraculously only suffered minor injuries.

Photo by Andrew Merry on Getty Images

National Transportation Safety Board recommends stricter regulations for automated vehicles

Following testimony from numerous panelists and analysts on the causes of the crash and what could be done to prevent similar crashes in the future, the National Transportation Safety Board emerged from the meeting recommending major changes to how regulators scrutinize automated vehicle technology.

While the investigation focused on BlueCruise, which is a lower level of automation than level 4 systems like Tesla Robotaxi and Waymo, the NTSB did not distinguish between them.

NTSB recommendations for Ford, U.S. DOT and NHTSA​stronger federal guidelines and performance standards for safety features of partial automation systems,crash data recording and automatic crash notification requirements,improved driver monitoring systems to detect distraction, andchanges to Ford’s BlueCruise system to reduce excessive speeding and improve driver attention.source: National Transportation Safety Board

Related: Tesla hits huge Robotaxi milestone, but questions in Austin remain

“This investigation highlights the urgent need for stronger safety standards and better oversight of automated driving systems,” said NTSB chairwoman Jennifer Homendy. “Manufacturers and federal regulators must ensure these technologies are designed, monitored, and implemented in ways that keep all our road users safe. We cannot take a ‘hands-off’ approach to hands-free driving technology. Lives depend on it.”

But specifically, the investigation found “several gaps in safety and oversight of partial automation systems, since there are no federal requirements for those systems to record data during crashes,” which leaves manufacturers and government officials in the dark about what exactly needs to be done to protect the public and users of this technology.

The driver monitoring systems in the Fords were found to be ineffective at detecting driver distraction or disengagement, allowing off-road glances and failing to distinguish between attention to the road and attention to objects, such as cell phones, in the same field of vision.

“The investigation also noted problems in Ford’s BlueCruise implementation and a general lack of federal guidance and standards for these types of automation systems,” the NTSB says. “Due to the lack of federal performance standards, drivers can disengage Ford’s automatic emergency braking system when using hands-free BlueCruise. Drivers can also configure the intelligent adaptive cruise control up to 20 mph above the speed limit, reducing the protective benefits of these speed assist systems and increasing the risk of serious harm in a crash.”

Ford says it is committed to safety and appreciates the NTSB’s recommendations, though it also notes that the NTSB’s investigation found “no quality defects or equipment failures in BlueCruise.”

Ford says it will take the recommendations under serious consideration as it looks to make the technology better.

Autonomous vehicles are better than human drivers at some things, insurance analyst says

Waymo, which is the most active of the U.S robotaxi options, says that compared to those with human drivers, its autonomous vehicles have been involved in 90% fewer crashes resulting in serious injuries. 

Auto insurance companies have a lot at stake with this new technology. Autonomous vehicles could change insurance pricing at the most minute level. The question is: will it raise rates or lower them?

Right now, the industry is in a wait-and-see pattern.

“I don’t think they have the data yet to make that kind of assessment,” David Kidd, vice president for vehicle research at the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety, told Bloomberg when asked which drivers are more likely to crash: autonomous or human. “Most insurers are extremely conservative, and they rely on historical data to assess risk accurately. There just isn’t enough information available yet.”

Trent Victor, Waymo’s director of safety research and best practices, recently gave an interview saying much of the same, acknowledging that, “there is not yet sufficient mileage to make statistical conclusions about fatal crashes alone,” adding that “as we accumulate more mileage, it will become possible to make statistically significant conclusions on other subsets of data, including fatal crashes as its own category.”

Waymo vehicles have driven approximately 127 million miles across the fleet and have been involved in at least two fatal crashes, MSN reported. However, the autonomous vehicle was not directly found responsible for either of them. Human drivers average about 123 million car miles traveled for every fatality, according to the IIHS.

So how can an AV company prove to IIHS that its vehicles are safer than human drivers?

“It would depend upon the use case,” according to Kidd. “If a trucking company operates AVs on interstates between two hubs, and they’re able to do that with very infrequent crashes compared to truck drivers, then I would say they provide a substantial safety improvement in that environment. But I wouldn’t generalize to say that means automation is safer across the board. Those assessments need to be done on a case-by-case basis.”

Related: Waymo puts another passenger in a dangerous situation

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