2 Fatal MME BlueCruise Crashes / Distracted Drivers

[Bonehead]

This is a good warning to always keep your eyes on the damn road when using BlueCruise.

Interesting that the infrared driver monitoring system records and stores your image for later forensics, I'd never heard that before. Also, while acknowledging the tragic loss of life in these accidents, the fact that both MME drivers suffered only minor injuries with speeds exceeding 72mph is a testament to the MME's occupant safety capabilities.

https://www.jalopnik.com/2121664/fatal-ford-bluecruise-crashes-under-investigation-ntsb/

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[Sikkun]

the driver, who was intoxicated at the time.

Sure, she was drunk


But BlueCruise is the headline.

 

[Bonehead]

the driver, who was intoxicated at the time


But BlueCruise is the headline.

Both my title and the article headline say "Distracted Drivers".

 

[Sikkun]

Both my title and the article headline says "Distracted Drivers".

I am certain you have a different reaction to

2 Fatal MME BlueCruise Crashes / Distracted Drivers

than

Drunk Driver involved in fatal accident.

But ok.

 

[Mr. Toejam]

The Mach-e is safe and I am super happy about that.

But in both cases, the wrong people died.

The innocent people died and the idiots had minor injuries. Very sad.

We all know how overly sensitive Ford's emergency braking is. It kicks in hard and early, but at 70 mph, it takes about 300 feet to come to a complete stop. Even if the Mach-e detects the stopped car at 300 feet, it isn't going to stop in time. I doubt any emergency braking system, regardless of ADAS, would stop you in time.

Who knows how the NTSB will react. A lot of the decisions in government are made for the wrong reasons. We can hope that common sense will show that BlueCruise, 360 Co-Pilot, Adaptive Cruise and Emergency Braking are drive aids and not replacements for the drivers. These cases were the fault of the drivers.

 

[Teslaeata]

So, BC is at fault for one collision where reckless driver is drunk as a skunk going 50% faster than the speed limit in construction zone and in the other a driver was not distracted but chose to distract himself it seems and drove without due care and attention.

Seems to me BC was no more likely to blame than the coincidence that both cars were electric; the sort of driver behaviour is nothing new to EVs or cars with BC; it is a matter of record that these drivers’ apparent behaviour, carelessness and recklessness has been responsible for collisions in many other kinds of vehicles whether ICE, EV, hybrid, red or even blue cars

It’s the loose nut behind the wheel, surely

 

[GreaseMonkey]

The car is taking pics of your lovely faces while driving. Did you all know that? Like @Bonehead mentions, I certainly did not.

 

[kens]

So sad. Gotta be present when you're driving, fewer things come out of nowhere that way.

I'm impressed the guy doing 74 wasn't hurt, the drunk girl going 72 was likely to walk away in the way typical drunks do, but the cars are incredible to allow these folks to basically walk it off.

I always assumed the cameras and sensors would be recording and available in case of a bad crash. This is the first I've seen it come up though. I always wished we could access it like the Tesla's do, but at least I ordered a dash cam yesterday, which I should've done a year ago.

I'm grateful to have Bluecruise. Due to some health issues that started a few years ago my road travel was really hampered, having the car handle 95% of the driving has been a huge gain for me, and restored some of the lost freedom. I plan for my next car to have it, something comparable, or more advanced.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

Who knows how the NTSB will react.

It actually doesn’t matter how the NTSB reacts. They have no rule making ability. They have no ability to issue a recall or anything else. The way it works is the investigators do rgeir stuff and writevit up. Then the board votes in what they they want to approve. Then they make recommendations, which are also voted on, to the appropriate regulatory agency. 9 times out of 10 those recommendations are ignored as theres no requirement that the NHTSA or FAA (in aviation cases) evrn adopt any of the recommendations.

The car is taking pics of your lovely faces while driving. Did you all know that? Like @Bonehead mentions, I certainly did not.

This might have been brought up before after an accident. In any event, I wasn’t surprised. Its far from a advertised “feature” though.

 

[Mache_Nor]

The car is taking pics of your lovely faces while driving. Did you all know that? Like @Bonehead mentions, I certainly did not.

If this also is the case in Europe it would certainly be interesting to test it against GDPR (privacy). There is a Eula likely, but everyone not on a high horse admits to not use half an hour to read those. I get the need for monitoring the driver, but storing image long term is something else and seems more done to try to shift blame (the driver is responsible, but there are parts of the support system of this car that deserves criticisms).

 

[Teslaeata]

The car is taking pics of your lovely faces while driving. Did you all know that? Like @Bonehead mentions, I certainly did not.

But do I really care?

………nope

 

[Teslaeata]

It actually doesn’t matter how the NTSB reacts. They have no rule making ability. They have no ability to issue a recall or anything else. The way it works is the investigators do rgeir stuff and writevit up. Then the board votes in what they they want to approve. Then they make recommendations, which are also voted on, to the appropriate regulatory agency. 9 times out of 10 those recommendations are ignored as theres no requirement that the NHTSA or FAA (in aviation cases) evrn adopt any of the recommendations.

This might have been brought up before after an accident. In any event, I wasn’t surprised. Its far from a advertised “feature” though.

Cars in EU have been recording pictures, not of driver but the road ahead/behind and when crash data is set or certain DTCs are set they record video in support of investigation into driver inputs or lack of them to defend Manufacturers in claims their vehicles are at fault.

 

[JoeDimwit]

If this also is the case in Europe it would certainly be interesting to test it against GDPR (privacy). There is a Eula likely, but everyone not on a high horse admits to not use half an hour to read those. I get the need for monitoring the driver, but storing image long term is something else and seems more done to try to shift blame (the driver is responsible, but there are parts of the support system of this car that deserves criticisms).

I don’t particularly care whether or not they are taking pictures of me in the car, as long as they aren’t being transmitted away from the car unless there is an accident. And, I would prefer that they can only be accessed from the vehicle directly.

I would be concerned about the field of view given IR cameras ability to see through clothing. Not for myself, but for the women in my life that occasionally drive the Smurfmobile.

 

[Mache_Nor]

I don’t particularly care whether or not they are taking pictures of me in the car, as long as they aren’t being transmitted away from the car unless there is an accident. And, I would prefer that they can only be accessed from the vehicle directly.

I would be concerned about the field of view given IR cameras ability to see through clothing. Not for myself, but for the women in my life that occasionally drive the Smurfmobile.

Is Smurfmobile a synonym for fake taxi?
If so I see a business proposition!

 

[Mach-Lee]

Reading the NTSB reports, there are some interesting tidbits.

Above 65 MPH, adaptive cruise control will not respond to stationary objects. This is to avoid phantom braking events.

In the Philadelphia crash, the Mach-E was following another lead vehicle at 71 MPH with hands-free BlueCruise engaged before encountering stopped vehicles. The lead vehicle (230' ahead) had to swerve to avoid the stopped cars (it lost control and crashed), this is reflected in the forward radar data retrieved from the Mach-E:

The Mach-E driver did not take over and hit the stopped vehicles. You can also see the radar detected the stopped car only about 50 feet or 0.4 seconds before collision. Not enough time to respond due to system limitations.

In the seconds before the crash, the driver monitoring camera recorded her eyes being on the road, but this image was retrieved showing she was holding and looking at her cell phone (object) right in front of the windshield to trick the system. Cell phone records also shows a call at the time, perhaps she was making a FaceTime call.

FYI these images had to be specially downloaded out of the monitoring camera by NTSB request (similar to reading a black box after an airplane crash), images do not leave the vehicle. I understand images are only saved in the device if there is a gaze warning or crash.

Low resolution forward camera images are also recored in the seconds leading up to the impact:

The 23-year-old driver in this case was impaired by alcohol and THC, and was charged with DUI.

The second referenced San Antonio crash was similar, there was a car stopped in the middle of the road, hands-Free BlueCruise was engaged driving 75 MPH, but the driver didn't see the car in time to avoid a collision (and BlueCruise also did not brake).

The remote telematic data showed the vehicle was switching in and out of BlueCruise in the minutes before the crash. Perhaps due to curves and/or manual driving.

There were also several gaze warnings recorded before the crash, the recovered data showed the driver was looking back and forth between the infotainment screen and the road immediately before collision. This could be an action such as trying to select a charger or destination on the screen. Even though the driver was still glancing at the road, he did not detected the blacked out vehicle before impact (TBH, that sounds like a difficult scenario to see a car). The NTSB interviewed another driver in front of the Mach-E that did happen to see the stopped vehicle and changed lanes in time.

In summary, both of these cited crashes involved hitting a stopped vehicle in the middle of the freeway, at night going 70+ MPH while hands-free BlueCruise was engaged. There was an element of driver distraction in both cases. But BlueCruise has limitations and is not able to detect stationary vehicles at freeway speeds. That sort of detection will likely require LIDAR. A vehicle stopped in the middle of a freeway at night is a very dangerous situation, and my belief it was only a matter of time before someone will hit them. This is also an extremely difficult scenario for current generation ADAS to reliably mitigate.

This data and full reports are available in the NTSB dockets for those accidents, links here: https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/MA20260311.aspx

When the NTSB makes their probable cause ruling, I suspect the lack of full attention from drivers will be the cause, but they will mention deficiencies in BlueCruise to detect stationary vehicles due to system limitations.

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