NHTSA opens probe into BlueCruise

[Ford_orr]

"Maybe because

Right, it's all Trump's fault."

I literally stated the exact opposite of that statement. But whatever you say chief ? .

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[superdave80]

Sounds like pilot error rather than system error.

These aren’t planes that crashed.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

These aren’t planes that crashed.

Figures of speech, allegory and metaphors may be asking too much I take it?

 

[tobiasjef]

I think it should be stickied that almost every ADAS system in a car uses a cheap, low resolution radar to sense the vehicles around them. This is a fundamentally unsafe technology as because the radar has such poor resolution it cannot distinguish between stopped cars/things on the road and other environmental variables.

Basically ADAS systems filter out non-moving and slow moving traffic in order to provide a usable signal.

While you can argue an ADAS system is not a self driving tool, this is a fundamental thing which should be solved. Because ADAS systems are operating at such high rates of speed that the handoff should be more graceful.

Car can't take steep curves? At least do it 90% good and make the handoff smooth to the driver. Car not guaranteed to see a stopped vehicle? At least see them 90% of the time to help instead of seeing them 0% of the time. Car can't drive in adverse weather? At least make it drive well enough that when the user needs to take over the car does not stop driving.

The issue is that if this probe turns out that not seeing stopped vehicles is a recall worth event, bluecruise will cease to exist as this involves a fundmental rewrite in the way bluecruise works.

you can already buy a system for your car which does not have this limitation called comma.ai

This system works exactly like the autopilot and FSD systems in a tesla which also do not have this limitation.

And as more and more cars can see stopped vehicles, this limitation will rear its ugly head when you jump into a car that can't do this and get caught off guard

I was using my tesla the other day and I turned into a neighborhood road. The car freaked out for a car that was almost sticking out of the driveway as if it predicted the car was going to reverse into me. Car did nothing except beep at me but it does show a clear difference as no other car on the road would even be able to detect such an event.

 

[CaptMachE]

This forum is an EV forum, so I guess it shouldn't be shocking that almost any and every thread can lasso Elon Musk into attempted relevance.

But this? ?

Man he lives in people's heads. ???

I absolutely enjoy the heck out of my Mach-E. It's been a fantastic ownership experience so far. The only thing it has to do with Elon, as far as I can tell, is it very likely wouldn't even exist if not for Tesla. Oh, and I guess there is one more Elon-ish thing about owning my Mach-E. I can charge at Tesla Superchargers when I travel to see my 93 year old dad. (400 mile round trip)

Selfishly speaking, I'm kinda grateful.

Poor baby. QEloon is a conman and loves idiots. Tesla has fooled far too many into thinking it is safe. Looks like you bit. QEloon certainly realized the poorly educated were An easy target, thanks for showing us.

 

[tobiasjef]

So. Before this thread spins out of control, let’s just set this straight:

This same exact collision could have happened to ANY CAR USING BASIC CRUISE CONTROL. Which means that BlueCruise did not cause the collision.

The only opposing argument I can think of is that BlueCruise is somehow tricking people into believing their car will stop for stationary objects. Okkkkayyy… but that seams like a stretch. How is Ford responsible for idiots not knowing how their tech works? And how does this differ from ACC in any myriad number of other makes/models?

The adaptive cruise sensors don’t work on stationary objects - whether Ford of anyone else - and you wouldn’t want it to!!! If it did, just imagine all the phantom braking that would occur due to the sensor being tricked by a shadow or a barrier off to the side of a curve, etc.

I hope this clarifies the issue. Let’s stay focused.

Because people come from driving other cars which do not have this limitation. Tesla hasn't had this limitation for about 8 years now. People think radar is safer than using cameras yet cameras do not have this limitation and radar does?

Mercedes does not have this limitation because they use lidar as many modern vehicles in 2025 also do.

you can buy a comma.ai system for almost any modern car which also does not have this limitation.

Even if you are not using camera depth estimation, they make better quality radar which are high definition and do not have the limitations of a car using cheap radar

Ford doesn't make it very clear that your car will not see stopped vehicles. It says it "may not" when it will see them almost 0% of the time

Both tesla and comma.ai do not have phantom braking anymore and they both use cameras. This is not an issue.

Ford could literally solve this problem by doing monocular depth estimation in a free software update. The issue is this is a fundmental technology that would set OEMs 5+ years back to solve.

 

[SonicBlue]

Because people come from driving other cars which do not have this limitation. Tesla hasn't had this limitation for about 8 years now. People think radar is safer than using cameras yet cameras do not have this limitation and radar does?

Mercedes does not have this limitation because they use lidar as many modern vehicles in 2025 also do.

you can buy a comma.ai system for almost any modern car which also does not have this limitation.

Even if you are not using camera depth estimation, they make better quality radar which are high definition and do not have the limitations of a car using cheap radar

Ford doesn't make it very clear that your car will not see stopped vehicles. It says it "may not" when it will see them almost 0% of the time

Both tesla and comma.ai do not have phantom braking anymore and they both use cameras. This is not an issue.

Ford could literally solve this problem by doing monocular depth estimation in a free software update. The issue is this is a fundmental technology that would set OEMs 5+ years back to solve.

I don’t drive a Tesla, but Tesla’s own website still cautions that its ACC doesn’t stop for stationary objects.

 

[ChehRob]

Traffic engineers generally believe that full self-driving will need smart roads. Technology for the latter is already here, and inexpensive to boot. FIXED cameras on a road can see an elk, stopped car, pedestrian, etc and transmit that information to the smart car. It can also signal both conditions ahead, and its confidence in signaling that. Green is go, Yellow is driver be prepared to take control, but slow down, Red traffic is stopped. Flashing for sure. Two colors uncertainty.

 

[CaptMachE]

Because people come from driving other cars which do not have this limitation. Tesla hasn't had this limitation for about 8 years now. People think radar is safer than using cameras yet cameras do not have this limitation and radar does?

Mercedes does not have this limitation because they use lidar as many modern vehicles in 2025 also do.

you can buy a comma.ai system for almost any modern car which also does not have this limitation.

Even if you are not using camera depth estimation, they make better quality radar which are high definition and do not have the limitations of a car using cheap radar

Ford doesn't make it very clear that your car will not see stopped vehicles. It says it "may not" when it will see them almost 0% of the time

Both tesla and comma.ai do not have phantom braking anymore and they both use cameras. This is not an issue.

Ford could literally solve this problem by doing monocular depth estimation in a free software update. The issue is this is a fundmental technology that would set OEMs 5+ years back to solve.

Yet Tesla does still have phantom brakign issues. 100% it does. I’ve experienced it. And have others in our Tesla club share with me stories about it. As well as turning into a wall on the freeway at 80 mph. As well as hitting curbs. So many things, yet QEloon relies on his jr Nazis to alwsys look away.

 

[Snakebitten]

Such a cheery disposition.

Thanks for the kind words.

 

[AllenXS]

Figures of speech, allegory and metaphors may be asking too much I take it?

I’m sure my car flys at times.

 

[tobiasjef]

I don’t drive a Tesla, but Tesla’s own website still cautions that its ACC doesn’t stop for stationary objects.

Tesla cautions against so many things in the manual that the car does just fine. There's a difference between ford using the term "may not" and fundmentally not seeing stopped cars and then tesla using the same term and seeing stopped vehicles 99% of the time. Big difference

Tesla warns about driving in adverse weather and the car turns around and does this:



Hitting curbs is not the same thing as bluecruise now is it? If you only use full self driving on the highway or interstate, you will not hit a curb. In city driving they fixed the issue which 99.9% of people never experienced anyways

people don't understand. Tesla has 2 softwares. Autopilot and FSD supervised. Autopilot has not been updated in about 8 years and it is included free with every car.

FSD has been around for a little over 1 year in wide release. FSD only recently received a highway update about 3 months ago as they driving performance was "good enough" and they

 

[Maui]

Y

So. Before this thread spins out of control, let’s just set this straight:

This same exact collision could have happened to ANY CAR USING BASIC CRUISE CONTROL. Which means that BlueCruise did not cause the collision.

The only opposing argument I can think of is that BlueCruise is somehow tricking people into believing their car will stop for stationary objects. Okkkkayyy… but that seams like a stretch. How is Ford responsible for idiots not knowing how their tech works? And how does this differ from ACC in any myriad number of other makes/models?

The adaptive cruise sensors don’t work on stationary objects - whether Ford of anyone else - and you wouldn’t want it to!!! If it did, just imagine all the phantom braking that would occur due to the sensor being tricked by a shadow or a barrier off to the side of a curve, etc.

I hope this clarifies the issue. Let’s stay focused.

Yes and furthermore there have been reports that "flashing" lights blind the cameras. This is a technology issue not a particular vendor problem. It suggests to me that cameras alone are not the solution. Sure those camera can see better than us, but still not good enough.

 

[tobiasjef]

Y


Yes and furthermore there have been reports that "flashing" lights blind the cameras. This is a technology issue not a particular vendor problem. It suggests to me that cameras alone are not the solution. Sure those camera can see better than us, but still not good enough.

this would be a vendor issue. you need cameras with a coating to minimize glare, you need a higher dynamic range camera, and you need better neural networks to train around cases where visibility is limited.

you can see in that video above that the tesla is driving in rain where no road markings are visible.

you can also see tesla driving in sun glare, in scenarios where snow covers the roads and nothing is visible.

If a human can drive in those scenarios a camera can do better as it does not feel pain staring into the sun or have vision defects like glaucoma, cataracts, cloudy vitreous fluid, ghosting, afterimages etc.

By all measures, a camera is like a human with 100% perfect vision which is never the case for anyone

 

[MacherAWD]

this would be a vendor issue. you need cameras with a coating to minimize glare, you need a higher dynamic range camera, and you need better neural networks to train around cases where visibility is limited.

you can see in that video above that the tesla is driving in rain where no road markings are visible.

you can also see tesla driving in sun glare, in scenarios where snow covers the roads and nothing is visible.

If a human can drive in those scenarios a camera can do better as it does not feel pain staring into the sun or have vision defects like glaucoma, cataracts, cloudy vitreous fluid, ghosting, afterimages etc.

By all measures, a camera is like a human with 100% perfect vision which is never the case for anyone

A camera requires a computer to be hooked to it. Eyes require a brain to be hooked to it. Currently no computer can compete with the human brain computer. So we need AI/computing to be processing at or beyond a human.

Tesla drives unsafely in those conditions. When weather is bad my mach-e taps out, BC shuts off and I take over. Just because Tesla pretends to drive well in those conditions does not mean that it does.

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