The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the U.S. equivalent of Transport Canada, says it has opened an investigation potentially affecting 129,222 Ford vehicles due to reports of collisions related to BlueCruise hands-free semi-autonomous driving technology.
Two of those collisions involved fatalities, which has led the NHTSA to act swiftly.
According to the NHTSA, in both cases, the vehicles were traveling at speeds in excess of 120 km/h on a highway, under night-time lighting conditions, when they collided with stopped vehicles. The agency is thus focusing its investigation on the detection of stopped vehicles by vehicles with BlueCruise in use and moving at highway speed.
Ford has not yet issued any official response to the announcement.
The BlueCruise semi-autonomous driving system works with a driver monitoring system based on camera work to determine the level of attention of whoever is at the controls of the vehicle. It can be used on 97 percent of U.S. and Canadian highways that don’t have intersections or traffic lights.
