The National Transportation Safety Board said systems that let drivers take their hands off the wheel do not improve road safety, even as automakers market them as relieving drivers and reducing risk. Speaking Tuesday at a hearing on two fatal crashes involving Ford’s Blue Cruise, NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said the systems’ core effect is to make driving more convenient, not safer.
Homendy said the systems “function primarily as convenience features rather than safety enhancements,” framing the board’s concerns as applying beyond Ford to driver-assistance technology more broadly. At the hearing, the NTSB recommended that Ford improve how Blue Cruise monitors drivers and urged the federal government to establish minimum safety standards for similar technologies across the industry.
The NTSB’s concerns focused on two 2024 crashes in Texas and Pennsylvania that killed three people. In both, the board said the drivers were distracted in ways Blue Cruise failed to recognize, while the vehicles remained capable of handling steering, braking and acceleration on highways.
In Texas, a Ford Mustang Mach-E struck stopped vehicles on Interstate 10 in San Antonio at nearly 75 mph at night, killing one person. The NTSB said investigators found the driver had only briefly glanced at the road while searching for a charging station, and there was no evidence the driver or the Blue Cruise automated systems tried to slow the car or swerve.
In Pennsylvania, the NTSB said another Mach-E crash killed two people on Interstate 95 in Philadelphia at night. The Ford was traveling 72 mph even though the speed limit had dropped to 45 mph in a construction zone, according to the account presented at the hearing, and state police said the Ford struck a stationary Hyundai Elantra that had earlier collided with a Toyota Prius.
Homendy and other witnesses said the technology can encourage drivers to look away because they assume the system will compensate. Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said drivers who are accustomed to checking their phones may believe it is acceptable to do so while using these systems because “they trust them,” adding that “Our brains are just wired” to seek other activity when people think the system will reliably handle driving.
The NTSB also said it is not the driver-assistance functions themselves but the monitoring and expectations around them that present risk. Michael Graham, the NTSB’s vice chair, said there are currently no clear U.S. government safety standards for these systems, so automakers’ versions can vary widely, and he said the only place many caveats appear is in owner manuals that many people do not read cover-to-cover.
NTSB members and outside experts also cited limitations in how systems detect hazards and how automakers describe them to consumers. Graham said he was concerned some systems have difficulty detecting stationary objects, and Homendy used a Ford commercial as an example, depicting a mother in a driver’s seat who appears to conduct a symphony with her eyes closed while talking to kids in the backseat.
Philip Koopman, a professor emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University and an expert on self-driving vehicle safety, said the NTSB’s findings highlight longstanding concerns about driver-assistance limitations and the need for more work. Koopman said the “finding today is that the journey is not over. More work is needed,” while also pointing to the broader safety context of hands-free driver-assistance claims.
Homendy said the NTSB’s long-running recommendations contrast with systems that can automatically stop a car when they detect an impending collision, which she said have proven effective at reducing traffic deaths. She also addressed scrutiny directed at other technologies, saying it is not fair to treat a system as worse simply because it has reported more crashes, and she called for more reliable tracking and reporting by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
In addition to the two crash investigations, NTSB members raised concerns about how drivers may use these systems while impaired. Homendy and other speakers said drivers under the influence of alcohol or drugs may believe driver-assistance technology can help them drive home while impaired, and Koopman said “it’s obvious to anyone paying attention” that people buy the technology with that plan.
The hearing also included discussion of a pending criminal case tied to one of the fatal crashes. The NTSB said the Pennsylvania driver in the Philadelphia crash was later charged with DUI homicide, and that case remained pending with no trial date set at the time of the hearing.