NTSB To Investigate Fatal Accident in San Antonio Involving Ford BlueCruise

[Jim Lewis]

Article posted to mysantonio.com: Ford Blue Cruise features center of NTSB crash investigation (mysanantonio.com)

A Mach-E under BlueCruise control slammed into a Honda CRV sitting motionless on a road with all its lights out. The driver of the CRV was killed. There are obviously a lot as yet unanswered questions as to why BlueCruise didn't "see" the CRV and what the Mach-E driver was doing at the time. Thirty days to a preliminary report, one to two years before NTSB issues final results of investigation.

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[TheBigBezo]

Lot of questions, mainly why the radar didn't pick the CRV up. I've almost hit someone on I-10 before (in a much older car) who had stalled and had no lights. At 75mph your reaction time, especially with old headlights, is super slow. I had to aggressively swerve to miss. I would hope the Lightning could use it's sensors to see an obstacle, granted, modern LED headlights are super nice. All the technology in the world won't stop you from hitting someone if you don't see them early enough, and dead of night no lights will do it. Scary stuff.

 

[Runaway Tractor]

Lot of questions, mainly why the radar didn't pick the CRV up.

That's not a question at all actually. Recognizing an object that is not moving is difficult for radar. This is a very well known and understood limitation of radar. Every manufacturer knows it. The NTSB, DOT, IIHS, AND NHTSA all know of this. It's even written in many vehicle owners manuals. And it is why radar didn't prevent every similar accident involving Teslas.

It was dark and the stopped car has no lights on. Therefore the vision system also couldn't see it. An attentive driver with eyes open and paying attention may or may not have seen it.

This is like running a news media story wondering why rain is wet.

 

[reffahcs]

That's not a question at all actually. Recognizing an object that is not moving is difficult for radar. This is a very well known and understood limitation of radar. Every manufacturer knows it. The NTSB, DOT, IIHS, AND NHTSA all know of this. It's even written in many vehicle owners manuals. And it is why radar didn't prevent every similar accident involving Teslas.

It was dark and the stopped car has no lights on. Therefore the vision system also couldn't see it. An attentive driver with eyes open and paying attention may or may not have seen it.

This is like running a news media story wondering why rain is wet.

This isn't a radar issue, radar is perfectly capable of detecting stationary objects.

The issue is with how vehicle manufacturers process the data from the various sensors, ie short and long range radar as well as cameras, to determine what is relevant information and what is noise. On a side note, it would be really cool to see the raw radar data from the Lightning.

I thought Tesla was still using their Tesla Vision for everything and no longer using radar or lidar, or have they switched back?

 

[Jim Lewis]

That's not a question at all actually. Recognizing an object that is not moving is difficult for radar. This is a very well known and understood limitation of radar.

This isn't a radar issue, radar is perfectly capable of detecting stationary objects.

Microsoft Copilot on the limitations of radar and lidar in vehicles: https://copilot.microsoft.com/sl/eWOuaqPZ1zM

Especially since BlueCruise is evolving and is not a static technology, I can see the point of NTSB investigating an accident involving a particular changing technology level of BlueCruise. You don't get better technology out of ignoring how current technology is failing. Once you've seen one Boeing 737 Max mishap, why should the NTSB investigate the next? Even if the crash was unavoidable, did collision avoidance even bother to kick in at any point in the crash, etc? Perhaps why the Honda CRV was stopped dead on an Interstate is going to get equal NTSB scrutiny. When the accident is purely caused by human failure, e.g., drunk driving, I'd agree that it's hardly worth it, but when it's associated with a nascent technology that's being incorporated into many brand-new cars and differs from brand to brand, scrutiny is deserved to understand how the accident evolved and automated controls behaved. Just like Ford designed its Home Integration Backup system in a "lab" environment and didn't adequately test it in enough different real-world environments to avoid user problems, perhaps there's some stuff in BlueCruise that looks good on paper, but here's an unfortunate real-world test where one might find in detail how it performed. And maybe in the future, it's vehicles that die or are deliberately stopped on a high-speed highway that will be changed to have some way of alerting oncoming traffic that something's there, independently of the driver's behavior. Someday, a vehicle should be smart enough to know that stopping dead on a high-speed road ain't a good thing. If the vehicle of the future can't move, it should send an alert with whatever power it has left... Just automatically activating the hazard flashers might be enough. "Intelligent" vehicles should try to avoid killing other humans because of their failings or the failings of the humans in them... Didn't happen here. Maybe the lesson will simply be BlueCruise overdrives its vehicle's headlights, radar, lidar, or whatever scan ahead technology is in use, and a self-driving car is going to have to drive slow enough that everyone inside, humans and "high-tech" scanning packages, can see far enough ahead to stop in time if something unexpected is on the road. Could be a steer, deer, or elk instead of a Honda CRV...

 

[reffahcs]

Like you said, there's lots of unknowns. It's all just speculation at this point. We can all just hope that Ford will use this tragedy to improve their system to prevent this from happening in the future. Very curious to see what the NTSB and Ford have to say about this incident in the future.

 

[Jim Lewis]

.....................

This is like running a news media story wondering why rain is wet.

OTH, the NTSB conclusion might just be that Ford has designed a BlueCruise system that allows the vehicle to self-drive at overly high-speed and doesn't demand the driver take control and responsibility for continuing at the given speed when the system can't see sufficiently far ahead down the road to stop in time. And perhaps they'll find, since some forum members have stated they like to drive as much as 9 mph over the speed limit, that the Mach-E driver had a speed limit tolerance set so high that he was overdriving his own ability as well as BlueCruise's ability to stop the Mach-E in time and if the vehicle had been traveling at a slower speed, the driver, if not the vehicle, might have at least been able to slow enough not to kill the occupant of the CRV. Sometimes, lawsuits over liability and damages can hinge on the outcome of accident investigations.

 

[Maxx]

I get The driving assist features like cross traffic alert and the truck hitting the break when it thinks I am screwing up, but driving the truck before it is completely ready never made sense to me. I think the blame goes to Tesla and Tesla owners that get excited about being used as guinea pigs. Now every manufacturer feels like they have to put out unfinished products out there to compete. Ford putting BlueCruise in the truck then saying “It does not replace safe driving” is absolutely ridiculous. If I can’t sit in the back while BlueCruise is driving, it should not be in the vehicle.

The entire point of it is so that you can have divided attention. That is why you feel more relaxed at the end of a long trip because your brain has processed a lot less information. I have been in the same situation before at night. When I finally saw the vehicle parked in the middle of a high speed road right in front of me, I was too close to it to check my mirrors but I already knew what other vehicles were around me from a second ago. Hitting the breaks wouldn’t do it. I was too close and the car behind me was close to me as well. I had to push the car to the edge of its handling ability to get out of that situation in one piece. If I was sharing the driving responsibility, no way I could respond quick enough.

I know those of you that are already hooked on BlueCruise will not give it up but I won’t purchase a vehicle with it or won’t use it until the company is willing to take full responsibility and I could spend my time looking at my iPad while the truck is driving.

 

[Danface]

I get The driving assist features like cross traffic alert and the truck hitting the break when it thinks I am screwing up, but driving the truck before it is completely ready never made sense to me. I think the blame goes to Tesla and Tesla owners that get excited about being used as guinea pigs. Now every manufacturer feels like they have to put out unfinished products out there to compete. Ford putting BlueCruise in the truck then saying “It does not replace safe driving” is absolutely ridiculous. If I can’t sit in the back while BlueCruise is driving, it should not be in the vehicle.

The entire point of it is so that you can have divided attention. That is why you feel more relaxed at the end of a long trip because your brain has processed a lot less information. I have been in the same situation before at night. When I finally saw the vehicle parked in the middle of a high speed road right in front of me, I was too close to it to check my mirrors but I already knew what other vehicles were around me from a second ago. Hitting the breaks wouldn’t do it. I was too close and the car behind me was close to me as well. I had to push the car to the edge of its handling ability to get out of that situation in one piece. If I was sharing the driving responsibility, no way I could respond quick enough.

I know those of you that are already hooked on BlueCruise will not give it up but I won’t purchase a vehicle with it or won’t use it until the company is willing to take full responsibility and I could spend my time looking at my iPad while the truck is driving.

Yup, if I don't want to work the peddles and turn the wheel, I'll hire a chauffeur (and eat ramen noodles)

 

[Maxx]

Yup, if I don't want to work the peddles and turn the wheel, I'll hire a chauffeur (and eat ramen noodles)

Now we are talking. You always need someone you can blame. If your chauffeur tells you I can not guarantee safe driving, you just get one that can.

 

[Danface]

Now we are talking. You always need someone you can blame. If your chauffeur tells you I can not guarantee safe driving, you just get one that can.

AND we all know that today it'sabout being able to blame someone ... else

 

[TaxmanHog]

With level 2 ADAS, we are responsible for being fully attentive and ready to take over when evasive maneuvers are needed.

https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update

 

[Newton]

Radar is perfectly capable of seeing stationary objects, that is why it was so useful for navigating in the fog before GPS (and is still useful for seeing other boats.) Modern doppler radar will even tell you if the target is approaching you or moving away.

Instead of self driving, I think it would be better to use the tech to extend our senses and help our reflexes. It would be nice if someone would figure out how to incorporate the lidar and radar data into a driver's display for situations like this. Kia and Tesla put an indication of vehicles around you on the nav screen but I'm thinking of something incorporated into the HUD.

 

[Maxx]

With level 2 ADAS, we are responsible for being fully attentive and ready to take over when evasive maneuvers are needed.

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).

 

[F-150Evolved]

I returned a Tesla 3 loaner because it tried to kill me five times in ten days. My Lightning's blue cruse seems way more safe because it never yanked the steering wheel out of my hands when the computer disagrees or gets confused.

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