Drivers in fatal Ford BlueCruise crashes may have been distracted prior to impact

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

The safety board released documents on each accident and announced that it will hold a public hearing on March 31 in Washington DC, where it will discuss its findings and may issue recommendations to Ford. The NTSB is an independent federal agency that investigates transportation accidents, but does not regulate the industry. The agency is expected to issue a final report in the weeks following the March 31 hearing.

The crash was the subject of not only an NTSB investigation, but also one from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The NHTSA, which regulates safety, said in early 2025 it determined that BlueCruise has limitations in “finding stationary vehicles under certain conditions” and advanced the investigation; The regulator sent Ford a full list of questions as part of that investigation in June 2025, which the company responded to in August. The investigation is ongoing.

In all this, Ford emphasized that BlueCruise is “simple” and that drivers must always be ready to control the car. It also warns drivers that BlueCruise is “not a crash warning or avoidance system.” Buyers of new Ford vehicles can purchase BlueCruise for a one-time fee of $2,495 or a $495 annual subscription, according to the company.

That said, the NTSB’s investigation — and a hearing later this month — will likely shed light on how companies like Ford communicate the intent of these driver assistance programs and how to ensure they’re used properly.

Distracted driving is a theme that has come up in various other investigations into other popular driver assistance systems such as Tesla’s retired Autopilot and its “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” software. A previous NTSB investigation into Autopilot-related deaths in 2018 noted distracted driving.

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

The first crash

The BlueCruise crash occurred in early 2024. The first took place in February of that year in San Antonio, Texas. The driver of a 2022 Ford Mustang Mach-E was traveling in the center of Interstate 10 when he struck a stationary 1999 Honda CR-V at 74 miles per hour. The driver of the Ford was operating BlueCruise shortly before the collision, which occurred at 9:48 pm local time. The driver of the Ford had minor injuries, while the driver of the Honda died as a result of the injuries he received during the accident.

New information released by the NTSB on Wednesday shows that Ford’s camera-based driver monitoring system registers the driver looking at the main infotainment screen five seconds before the crash. The driver’s monitoring system detected him facing the road a few fractions of a second about 3.6 seconds before the crash, and again about 1.6 seconds before the crash. He received two visual and audible warnings to watch the road 30 seconds before the crash, but did not brake before impact.

Documents show that the driver told the San Antonio Police Department that he was using the driveway to get to the charging station. One of the reports says “you may have been looking at the center screen console because the directions to the charging station were shown there.”

He may have been nodding off before the crash, but it’s almost impossible to tell 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 headrest and slightly tilted to the right.” The driver got a lawyer after police interviewed him, and the lawyer refused to let him talk to the NTSB.

The second crash

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 collided with a 2012 Hyundai Elantra, stopped on the left side of the road. The Elantra struck a 2006 Toyota Prius in front of it.

The two drivers were friends and had stopped for an unknown reason, and the driver of the Prius had gotten out of his car and was standing to the left of the Elantra. Both drivers of the Elantra and Prius were killed, and 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. In late 2024 he was charged with DUI manslaughter. He was going about 72 miles per hour before impact even though he was in a construction zone limited to 45 miles 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 documents show that Patel’s driver monitoring system kept his eyes on the “road” five seconds before the crash. But footage taken two seconds before impact appears to show him holding the phone above the steering wheel and almost invisible to the driver monitoring system.

Ford did not immediately respond to a request for questions about whether it was aware of this potential deficiency in its driver monitoring system, or whether the company has done anything to mitigate it.

What about automatic emergency braking?

Modern Ford vehicles are equipped with forward-collision warning (FCW) and automatic emergency braking (AEB), different from BlueCruise.

In addition to warning that BlueCruise is “not a crash warning or avoidance system,” Ford also cautions owners that FCW and AEB are “driver assistance” features that are “add-ons,” and “do not replace the driver’s attention, judgment, and need to control the vehicle.”

That’s likely because Ford sees real limitations in the capabilities of the technology that powers these systems — a combination of camera and radar sensors.

The NTSB says in one of its reports about the Texas crash that it held meetings with Ford employees about “AEB response to static targets in situations like this crash.”

Ford employees told the NTSB that, “[b]Based on the operational limitations of the industry’s sensitivity technology, coupled with the vehicle’s travel speed, maneuvering of nearby vehicles and environmental factors, Ford would not expect the current generation of AEB systems to integrate a radar camera to detect and distinguish collision targets with sufficient certainty for the AEB system to respond.”

To that end, the NTSB noted in documents released Wednesday that no vehicle system held the brakes in any of these fatal crashes.