The driver of a Mustang Mach-E who crashed into a stationary car in Texas in February was using Ford’s hands-free driver assistance system, BlueCruise, according to data obtained by the National Transportation Safety Board.
It’s the first known fatality resulting from a crash involving the use of BlueCruise, which Ford first announced in 2021.
The NTSB’s announcement that BlueCruise was active during the Texas crash comes just one day after the safety board announced it’s probing a second fatal crash near Philadelphia where Ford’s driver assistance system may have been active.
The NTSB released on Thursday what’s known as a preliminary report, and is still investigating the crash.
NHTSA is also probing the Texas crash, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Tesla is about to start giving every customer in the U.S. a one-month trial of its $12,000 driver-assistance system, which it calls Full Self-Driving Beta, provided they have a car with the compatible hardware.
The company is also reportedly mandating, at CEO Elon Musk’s request, that prospective buyers are given a demo of the software before they purchase a new Tesla.
The full-court press to promote FSD Beta software, an upgraded version of the Autopilot system that comes standard in all Tesla vehicles, is happening at an interesting moment for the company.
It’s the end of the first quarter of 2024, and Tesla usually pulls out all the stops — including having executives help deliver cars to customers — to meet or beat its sales goals.
The decision to temporarily increase access to the FSD Beta software comes as Tesla has been rolling out a new “V12” version of the software that ditches the previous code in favor of a system that runs entirely on neural networks.
Cruise lost the permits it needed to operate commercially in the state of California and has since grounded its fleet elsewhere.
Problems with Cruise began almost immediately after the company received the last remaining permit required to operate its robotaxi service commercially throughout San Francisco.
On that day, a pedestrian crossing a street in San Francisco was initially hit by a human-driven car and landed in the path of a Cruise robotaxi and run over.
Even after obtaining the Full Video, Cruise did not correct the public narrative but continued instead to share incomplete facts and video about the Accident with the media and the public.
This conduct has caused both regulators and the media to accuse Cruise of misleading them.”This story is developing …
Tesla’s Autopilot has been under scrutiny for some time now, with many people believing that the system is to blame for a number of accidents. However, this latest verdict indicates…
Rumors are swirling around the Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse. Some reports say that a tech giant may be interested in buying the assets of the bankrupt bank, while others suggest…
