NTSB To Investigate Fatal Accident in San Antonio Involving Ford BlueCruise

[Grumpy2]

If you don't have a physical disability, I assume you would use auto-steer to relax, thus take all your attention away from the task of driving. If the tech develops to the point it is better than a human, than it is a positive step. However, Tesla hasn't been able to achieve that after years of using super computing efforts...

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[hturnerfamily]

boy, just like the article's writer, you all are buying into some 'fact' that the BlueCruise was even OPERATIONAL at the time of the incident:

all the article says is:
"...was equipped with the manufacturer’s advanced driver assist system..."

it does NOT say that the driver was USING BlueCruise, or ANY 'assisted driving' technology at the time.


boy.... : /

we all like to 'jump' to conclusions, even when we are getting on to others who we believe are jumping to conclusions themselves... : ?

 

[Zprime29]

boy, just like the article's writer, you all are buying into some 'fact' that the BlueCruise was even OPERATIONAL at the time of the incident:

all the article says is:
"...was equipped with the manufacturer’s advanced driver assist system..."

it does NOT say that the driver was USING BlueCruise, or ANY 'assisted driving' technology at the time.


boy.... : /

we all like to 'jump' to conclusions, even when we are getting on to others who we believe are jumping to conclusions themselves... : ?

Was also wondering about that. The article certainly implies that BlueCruise was enabled per the line, " A fatal crash in San Antonio last month has garnered national attention due to the self-automated features of a Ford Mustang Mach-E involved." However, nowhere else in the article did it explicitly state that it was active at the time of the crash. They mention the driver's comment about the CRV being stationary and no lights. If he was coherent enough for that, he surely must have been able to say if BlueCruise was on. So why not put that in there?

 

[Lytning]

Slightly off topic since my post does not directly involve the tragic fatal accident, but it may address the potential to reduce future fatal accidents while using BlueCruise. A head's up ... most readers are not going to like this one ...

Why do BlueCruise and other driver-assistance systems allow the driver to set and maintain a speed which is above the posted speed limit?

Speed limits are supposedly set to a "safe" speed based upon typical driving conditions and accident history for a given stretch of road. It could easily be argued that the driver-assistance system designers are "assisting" unsafe actions by the driver. I am very surprised that the NTSB has not addressed this issue.

 

[Henry Ford]

Here is my issue with it:

How many of the folks that use the system are in fact FULLY attentive during the entire trip while they use the system? And of those (if any) how many see an advantage in using the system? My suspicion is the only advantage is when you are NOT fully attentive.

That of course requires honest answers not just from those that want to protect their precious toy.


p.s. Adaptive cruise and lane centering I could relax about a little if they worked reliably. My lane centering has not been reliable. I only turn it on when I am really in bad shape (Exhausted).

The problem with your framing is that you are implying that people driving without advanced driver aids are fully attentive. I propose that many if not most drivers aren't fully attentive a lot of the time. If that's true, it stands to reason that driver aids are safer in the aggregate. If someone is scrolling Tic Toc I'd rather they stay in their lane while doing it.

 

[Ish]

In the event of a collision the BlueCruise driver facing cameras can save about ten seconds of recordings of the driver; it will be interesting to see if those videos were saved are used in this case.

 

[Toby57]

boy, just like the article's writer, you all are buying into some 'fact' that the BlueCruise was even OPERATIONAL at the time of the incident:

all the article says is:
"...was equipped with the manufacturer’s advanced driver assist system..."

it does NOT say that the driver was USING BlueCruise, or ANY 'assisted driving' technology at the time.


boy.... : /

we all like to 'jump' to conclusions, even when we are getting on to others who we believe are jumping to conclusions themselves... : ?

I also noticed the article didn't say on or off.
Somebody said something or maybe traffic investigators want to know if a way to tell if it was on at time of crash.

 

[Toby57]

For the NTSB to get involved in a traffic accident it would seem to me they were requested.
Maybe not.

 

[Pioneer74]

boy, just like the article's writer, you all are buying into some 'fact' that the BlueCruise was even OPERATIONAL at the time of the incident:

all the article says is:
"...was equipped with the manufacturer’s advanced driver assist system..."

it does NOT say that the driver was USING BlueCruise, or ANY 'assisted driving' technology at the time.


boy.... : /

we all like to 'jump' to conclusions, even when we are getting on to others who we believe are jumping to conclusions themselves... : ?

The owner of the Mach-E posted on our sister site that BlueCruise was activated and operational during the accident.

 

[Maxx]

The problem with your framing is that you are implying that people driving without advanced driver aids are fully attentive. I propose that many if not most drivers aren't fully attentive a lot of the time. If that's true, it stands to reason that driver aids are safer in the aggregate. If someone is scrolling Tic Toc I'd rather they stay in their lane while doing it.

whether you are right about this or I am is a matter of total impact and total difference with and without BC. If Tic Toc guy was spending 2 minutes of a 30 minutes drive looking at his screen before he got BC and now he is spending 15 minutes, the total impact still can be negative. What I am suggesting is that regardless of how distracted you were before, you will likely be more distracted with another driver at the wheel.

The problem with these technologies is that they are great at 99% of the situations 99% of us usually are. And when that 1% happens to someone else, it is just a news about some unlucky schmuck. Our personal experience has been 100% positive so we get more confident and we use the system more until statistically, that risk is no longer insignificant to us as individuals.

p.s. You can have a lot of safety features without the car driving itself. It is not an all or nothing deal.

 

[djstough]

Speed limits are supposedly set to a "safe" speed based upon typical driving conditions and accident history for a given stretch of road. It could easily be argued that the driver-assistance system designers are "assisting" unsafe actions by the driver. I am very surprised that the NTSB has not addressed this issue.

Interstate speed limits are (or at least were) supposed to be set at the 85th percentile of actual moving traffic. Instead, many are artificially set way below the safe speed that traffic actually moves. I can tell you the last time I saw a vehicle doing 55 on the Baltimore Beltway was also the time I saw many near-misses of him being rear-ended. It's a phony limit. And it's not like they use it for enforcement, since there aren't enough patrols to go around!

 

[Grumpy2]

In this issue, a man-slaughter case raises the risk to the driver too.

 

[Henry Ford]

whether you are right about this or I am is a matter of total impact and total difference with and without BC. If Tic Toc guy was spending 2 minutes of a 30 minutes drive looking at his screen before he got BC and now he is spending 15 minutes, the total impact still can be negative. What I am suggesting is that regardless of how distracted you were before, you will likely be more distracted with another driver at the wheel.

The problem with these technologies is that they are great at 99% of the situations 99% of us usually are. And when that 1% happens to someone else, it is just a news about some unlucky schmuck. Our personal experience has been 100% positive so we get more confident and we use the system more until statistically, that risk is no longer insignificant to us as individuals.

p.s. You can have a lot of safety features without the car driving itself. It is not an all or nothing deal.

Do you think roads are safer with advanced driver's aids or without them?

 

[Maxx]

Do you think roads are safer with advanced driver's aids or without them?

That is a false choice. You are trying to dump everything into the same bucket and say they are either all good or all bad. That is simply not the case, technologies that have matured and well implemented make the roads a safer place and the ones that are not don’t.

My wife’s Subaru was hit in a parking lot when she was backing out. If she had rear traffic cross alert and automatic breaks, she probably would have avoided that accident.

However when this guy says my Tesla tried to kill me, he is not talking about the same thing:

https://www.f150lightningforum.com/...o-involving-ford-bluecruise.18784/post-377598

I am not against implementing well tested proven technologies. I am against testing them on public roads.

 

[Henry Ford]

That is a false choice. You are trying to dump everything into the same bucket and say they are either all good or all bad. That is simply not the case, technologies that have matured and well implemented make the roads a safer place and the ones that are not don’t.

I'm not saying anything is good or bad. I'm suggesting, in the aggregate, roads are safer with modern vehicles with advanced driver's aids. Do you agree with that statement or not?

What safety feature do you think is unsafe? BlueCruise?

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