Policy & Regulation
Ford BlueCruise drivers likely distracted in fatal crashes, NTSB says
NTSB documents suggest drivers were likely distracted while using Ford’s BlueCruise system during two fatal 2024 crashes, prompting upcoming regulatory hearings on the technology's limitations.
New information released on Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the US transportation safety investigator, indicates that drivers involved in two fatal crashes while using Ford’s BlueCruise hands-free driving system were likely distracted in the moments before impact. The NTSB has scheduled a public hearing for March 31 in Washington, D.C., to discuss the findings and is likely to issue recommendations to Ford. The crashes have also drawn scrutiny from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the US safety regulator. In early 2025, the NHTSA determined that BlueCruise has limitations in detecting stationary vehicles in certain conditions. In June 2025, the regulator sent questions to Ford, which the automaker answered in August.
Ford maintains that BlueCruise is a convenience feature and that drivers must always be ready to take control, warning that the system is not a crash warning or avoidance system. The software is available for a one-time fee of $2,495 or a $495 annual subscription. The issue of distracted driving has surfaced in prior driver-assistance investigations. Commenting on a previous 2018 crash involving another system, former NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt noted, “In this crash we saw an over-reliance on technology, we saw distraction, we saw a lack of policy prohibiting cell phone use while driving, and we saw infrastructure failures, which, when combined, led to this tragic loss.”
The first of the two fatal crashes occurred in February 2024 in San Antonio, Texas. A Ford vehicle traveling at around 74 miles per hour struck a stationary car. NTSB documents show the vehicle’s camera-based driver-monitoring system registered the driver looking at the center infotainment screen in the five seconds before the crash, possibly to view navigation directions. The system only detected the driver looking at the road at about 3.6 seconds and again at about 1.6 seconds before impact. The driver received two visual and auditory alerts to watch the road in the 30 seconds before the crash but did not brake. A still image captured two seconds before the crash showed the driver “sitting upright and facing forward, with his head resting (or nearly resting) on the headrest and slightly rotated to the right.”
The second crash occurred in March 2024 in Philadelphia. The driver, a 23-year-old woman named Dimple Patel, was traveling at about 72 miles per hour in a construction zone with a 45 miles per hour speed limit. Patel was charged with DUI homicide in late 2024. While the driver-monitoring system registered her eyes as on the road for the full five seconds before impact, a photograph taken two seconds before the crash appeared to show her holding a phone. In both crashes, no automatic emergency braking (AEB) was applied. Ford employees told the NTSB that, due to the limitations of current radar-camera fusion AEB systems, the company would not expect the technology to detect and classify a stationary collision target with enough confidence to respond under such conditions.
Why it matters
The NTSB’s investigation and upcoming hearing are expected to increase scrutiny on how automakers communicate the capabilities and limitations of driver-assistance systems like Ford’s BlueCruise.