The U.S. auto regulator mentioned on Monday it has opened a preliminary investigation into Ford Motor’s hands-free driving expertise BlueCruise after being knowledgeable of two incidents involving Mustang Mach-E automobiles that collided with stationary automobiles.
The Nationwide Freeway Site visitors Security Administration’s Workplace of Defects Investigation (ODI) opened the analysis to research BlueCruise, which supplies partial driving automation with the expectation that the motive force actively supervises its efficiency.
Each the collisions occurred throughout “nighttime lighting situations”, and every resulted in at the least one fatality, in accordance with the NHTSA.
ODI’s preliminary investigation of the incidents confirmed BlueCruise’s engagement in every of the automobiles proper earlier than the collision.
BlueCruise is simply accessible on sure roadways and makes use of a camera-based driver monitoring system to find out driver attentiveness.
The investigation will consider the system’s efficiency on the dynamic driving job and driver monitoring, the NHTSA mentioned.
Ford Motor didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
BlueCruise was launched in mannequin 12 months 2021 automobiles and at current is there in a spread of Ford and Lincoln automobiles.
Final week, the NHTSA opened a probe into whether or not Tesla’s recall of greater than 2 million automobiles introduced in December to put in new Autopilot software program updates was ample following a sequence of crashes.
The NHTSA opened the investigation after receiving studies of 20 crashes involving automobiles that had the brand new Autopilot software program updates.
 opened the evaluation to investigate BlueCruise, which provides partial driving automation with the expectation that the driver actively supervises its performance.){kind=link}