Two drivers involved in fatal crashes in 2024 while using Ford’s BlueCruise hands-free driving system were likely distracted in the moments before impact, according to new information released Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
The safety board released documents for each crash and announced it will hold a public hearing on March 31 in Washington D.C., where it will discuss the findings and likely issue recommendations to Ford. The NTSB is an independent federal agency that investigates transportation accidents, but doesn’t regulate the industry. The agency is expected to release a final report in the weeks following the March 31 hearing.
The crashes not only triggered an investigation by the NTSB, but also one from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). NHTSA, which is a safety regulator, said in early 2025 it had determined BlueCruise has limitations in the “detection of stationary vehicles in certain conditions” and upgraded the probe; the regulator sent Ford an exhaustive list of questions as part of that probe in June 2025, which the company answered in August. The investigation is ongoing.
Ford has maintained through all this that BlueCruise is a “convenience feature” and that drivers must always be ready to take control of the vehicle. It also warns drivers that BlueCruise is “not a crash warning or avoidance system.” Buyers of new Ford vehicles can purchase BlueCruise for a one-time fee of $2,495 or a $495 annual subscription, according to the company.
That said, the NTSB’s investigation — and the hearing later this month — will likely put more of a spotlight on how companies like Ford communicate what purpose these driver assistance systems are supposed to serve and how to ensure they’re being used properly.
Distracted driving is a theme that has come up in various other investigations into other popular driver-assistance systems like Tesla’s now-retired Autopilot and its “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” software. The NTSB’s prior investigation into a 2018 Autopilot-related death made particular note of distracted driving.
“In this crash we saw an over-reliance on technology, we saw distraction, we saw a lack of policy prohibiting cell phone use while driving, and we saw infrastructure failures, which, when combined, led to this tragic loss,” NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt said at the time in reference to the 2018 crash.
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The first crash
The BlueCruise crashes took place in early 2024. The first one occurred in February that year in San Antonio, Texas. The driver of a 2022 Ford Mustang Mach-E was traveling in the center lane of Interstate 10 when he crashed into a stationary 1999 Honda CR-V at around 74 miles per hour. The Ford driver was using BlueCruise just before impact, which happened at 9:48 p.m. local time. The Ford driver had minor injuries, while the Honda driver died as a result of injuries sustained during the crash.
New information released by the NTSB on Wednesday shows that the Ford’s camera-based driver monitoring system registered the driver as looking at the main infotainment screen in the five seconds before the crash. The driver monitoring system only detected him looking at the road for a few fractions of a second at about 3.6 seconds before the crash, and again at about 1.6 seconds before the crash. He received two visual and auditory alerts to watch the road in the 30 seconds before the crash, but did not brake before impact.
The documents show that the driver told the San Antonio Police Department that he had been using the vehicle’s navigation system to travel to a charging station. One of the reports states that “he may have looked at the center screen console because directions to the charging station were displayed there.”
It’s possible he was nodding off before the crash, but nearly impossible to say for sure, based on the information released Wednesday. Ford’s system captured a still image of the driver two seconds before the crash, which the NTSB says shows him “sitting upright and facing forward, with his head resting (or nearly resting) on the headrest and slightly rotated to the right.” The driver obtained an attorney after the police interviewed him, and the attorney declined to allow him to speak with the NTSB.
The second crash
The second fatal BlueCruise crash happened in March 2024 in Philadelphia. The driver of a 2022 Mach-E was traveling on Interstate 95 at 3:16 a.m. local time when she crashed into a 2012 Hyundai Elantra, which was stopped on the left side of the road. The Elantra hit a 2006 Toyota Prius that had stopped in front of it.
Those two drivers were friends and had stopped for an unknown reason, and the Prius driver had gotten out of his car and was standing to the left of the Elantra. Both the Elantra and Prius drivers died, while the Mach-E driver sustained minor injuries.
The driver of the Mach-E, a 23-year-old woman named Dimple Patel, was intoxicated at the time, according to the local police. In late 2024 she was charged with DUI homicide. She was traveling at about 72 miles per hour before the impact despite being in a construction zone limited to 45 miles per hour. Zak Goldstein, a lawyer for Patel, told TechCrunch on Wednesday that the case is still pending and that a trial date has not been set.
The new NTSB documents show that the driver monitoring system in Patel’s car registered her eyes being “on-road” for the full five seconds before the crash. But the photograph taken two seconds before impact appears to show her holding a phone above the steering wheel and almost totally out of view of the driver monitoring system.
Ford did not immediately respond to a request to questions about whether it was aware of this potential shortfall of its driver monitoring system, or if the company has done anything to mitigate it.
What about automatic emergency braking?
Modern Ford vehicles are equipped with a forward-collision warning (FCW) system and automatic emergency braking (AEB), which are separate from BlueCruise.
In addition to warning that BlueCruise is “not a crash warning or avoidance system,” Ford also warns owners in fine print that FCW and AEB are “driver-assist” features that are “supplemental,” and “do not replace the driver’s attention, judgement, and need to control the vehicle.”
That may be because Ford sees real limitations in the capabilities of the technology that powers these systems — a mix of camera and radar sensors.
The NTSB says in one of the reports about the Texas crash that it held meetings with Ford staff about “AEB response to stationary targets in conditions similar to this crash.”
The Ford employees told the NTSB that, “[b]ased on the functional limitations of the industry’s sensing technologies, coupled with the scenario of vehicle travel speed, nearby vehicle maneuvers & environmental factors, Ford would not expect the current generation of radar-camera fusion AEB systems to detect and classify a collision target with enough confidence for the AEB system to respond.”
To that end, the NTSB noted in the documents released Wednesday that no vehicle subsystem applied any braking in either of the fatal crashes.
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![FCC Chairman Wants to Repeal a Key Rule That Would Fundamentally Change Broadcast News
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr wants to repeal a rule that has prevented a select handful of broadcasters from taking full control of the media landscape. Back in 2004, Congress instructed the FCC to enact a national ownership cap that would bar any one broadcast station owner from reaching more than 39% of American households. For more than 20 years, the rule has kept mega mergers in the TV broadcasting industry from gobbling up the entire media ecosystem. Now, Carr is proposing to repeal that national ownership cap rule, which, if successful, would mean broadcast TV giants will pretty much have a green light for mergers, even if it meant that one company would gain access to most of the media landscape. Carr expressed his intentions in an op-ed published by the far-right organization Breitbart. In the op-ed, he claimed that the cap was once helpful in protecting local news stations, but now it was becoming an obstacle as they compete with national news, large streamers, and social media giants.
Instead of a blanket rule, Carr wants to create a new “case-by-case approach.” “Previously, the cap operated as a blanket prohibition on any and all deals that would combine stations in excess of the 39 percent limit—regardless of whether it was a good deal or a bad one for the country,” Carr wrote in the op-ed. “Our new proposal would allow the FCC to approve deals that exceed the 39 percent cap, but only if doing so would promote the public interest.”
Major broadcasters have been lobbying for a change to the rule for quite some time now. One such mega TV broadcasting company that lobbied for the rule change is Nexstar. Earlier this year, the FCC granted Nexstar a waiver for the 39% national ownership cap rule and approved its acquisition of rival Tegna. The merger is still currently facing court challenges over antitrust claims, but if it is finalized, then Nexstar is estimated to expand its reach to at least 60% of American households. Sinclair, another Trump-allied major broadcaster that was behind a particularly infamous PR debacle during Trump’s first administration, is also eyeing a merger and commended the proposed rule change as “common sense.” Both companies also famously refused to air Jimmy Kimmel’s show on their channels late last year after the late-night host’s comments about Charlie Kirk drew ire from the Trump administration.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo[/embed] The FCC will vote on eliminating the rule on August 6th. There are three commissioners, two Republicans and one Democrat. The lone Democratic FCC Commissioner, Anna Gomez, took to X to voice her staunch opposition. “The FCC just announced it will move forward with its unlawful effort to hand control of the public airwaves to billionaire buddies of this administration,” Gomez wrote. “This will destroy local newsrooms, silence community reporting, and drive-up costs for American families.” Even if the action passes the FCC vote, it’s likely to receive pushback from both sides of the aisle in Congress. “Trump’s FCC Chair is trying to illegally rewrite the rules to make it easier for billionaires to line their own pockets while jacking up costs and controlling what Americans watch,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a statement. “After rubber-stamping the Nexstar-Tegna megamerger, this looks like the Trump administration’s latest attempt to roll out the red carpet for more antitrust disasters.”
Critics believe that because the rule was created following Congress’s action, it is up to Congress to determine if it should be retired. But Carr insists that the FCC has the authority to modify or repeal the rule. #FCC #Chairman #Repeal #Key #Rule #Fundamentally #Change #Broadcast #NewsBrendan carr,broadcast television,FCC](https://i1.wp.com/gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2262359639-1280x888.jpg?ssl=1 "FCC Chairman Wants to Repeal a Key Rule That Would Fundamentally Change Broadcast News
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr wants to repeal a rule that has prevented a select handful of broadcasters from taking full control of the media landscape. Back in 2004, Congress instructed the FCC to enact a national ownership cap that would bar any one broadcast station owner from reaching more than 39% of American households. For more than 20 years, the rule has kept mega mergers in the TV broadcasting industry from gobbling up the entire media ecosystem. Now, Carr is proposing to repeal that national ownership cap rule, which, if successful, would mean broadcast TV giants will pretty much have a green light for mergers, even if it meant that one company would gain access to most of the media landscape. Carr expressed his intentions in an op-ed published by the far-right organization Breitbart. In the op-ed, he claimed that the cap was once helpful in protecting local news stations, but now it was becoming an obstacle as they compete with national news, large streamers, and social media giants.
Instead of a blanket rule, Carr wants to create a new “case-by-case approach.” “Previously, the cap operated as a blanket prohibition on any and all deals that would combine stations in excess of the 39 percent limit—regardless of whether it was a good deal or a bad one for the country,” Carr wrote in the op-ed. “Our new proposal would allow the FCC to approve deals that exceed the 39 percent cap, but only if doing so would promote the public interest.”
Major broadcasters have been lobbying for a change to the rule for quite some time now. One such mega TV broadcasting company that lobbied for the rule change is Nexstar. Earlier this year, the FCC granted Nexstar a waiver for the 39% national ownership cap rule and approved its acquisition of rival Tegna. The merger is still currently facing court challenges over antitrust claims, but if it is finalized, then Nexstar is estimated to expand its reach to at least 60% of American households. Sinclair, another Trump-allied major broadcaster that was behind a particularly infamous PR debacle during Trump’s first administration, is also eyeing a merger and commended the proposed rule change as “common sense.” Both companies also famously refused to air Jimmy Kimmel’s show on their channels late last year after the late-night host’s comments about Charlie Kirk drew ire from the Trump administration.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo[/embed] The FCC will vote on eliminating the rule on August 6th. There are three commissioners, two Republicans and one Democrat. The lone Democratic FCC Commissioner, Anna Gomez, took to X to voice her staunch opposition. “The FCC just announced it will move forward with its unlawful effort to hand control of the public airwaves to billionaire buddies of this administration,” Gomez wrote. “This will destroy local newsrooms, silence community reporting, and drive-up costs for American families.” Even if the action passes the FCC vote, it’s likely to receive pushback from both sides of the aisle in Congress. “Trump’s FCC Chair is trying to illegally rewrite the rules to make it easier for billionaires to line their own pockets while jacking up costs and controlling what Americans watch,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a statement. “After rubber-stamping the Nexstar-Tegna megamerger, this looks like the Trump administration’s latest attempt to roll out the red carpet for more antitrust disasters.”
Critics believe that because the rule was created following Congress’s action, it is up to Congress to determine if it should be retired. But Carr insists that the FCC has the authority to modify or repeal the rule. #FCC #Chairman #Repeal #Key #Rule #Fundamentally #Change #Broadcast #NewsBrendan carr,broadcast television,FCC")
![FCC Chairman Wants to Repeal a Key Rule That Would Fundamentally Change Broadcast News
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr wants to repeal a rule that has prevented a select handful of broadcasters from taking full control of the media landscape. Back in 2004, Congress instructed the FCC to enact a national ownership cap that would bar any one broadcast station owner from reaching more than 39% of American households. For more than 20 years, the rule has kept mega mergers in the TV broadcasting industry from gobbling up the entire media ecosystem. Now, Carr is proposing to repeal that national ownership cap rule, which, if successful, would mean broadcast TV giants will pretty much have a green light for mergers, even if it meant that one company would gain access to most of the media landscape. Carr expressed his intentions in an op-ed published by the far-right organization Breitbart. In the op-ed, he claimed that the cap was once helpful in protecting local news stations, but now it was becoming an obstacle as they compete with national news, large streamers, and social media giants.
Instead of a blanket rule, Carr wants to create a new “case-by-case approach.” “Previously, the cap operated as a blanket prohibition on any and all deals that would combine stations in excess of the 39 percent limit—regardless of whether it was a good deal or a bad one for the country,” Carr wrote in the op-ed. “Our new proposal would allow the FCC to approve deals that exceed the 39 percent cap, but only if doing so would promote the public interest.”
Major broadcasters have been lobbying for a change to the rule for quite some time now. One such mega TV broadcasting company that lobbied for the rule change is Nexstar. Earlier this year, the FCC granted Nexstar a waiver for the 39% national ownership cap rule and approved its acquisition of rival Tegna. The merger is still currently facing court challenges over antitrust claims, but if it is finalized, then Nexstar is estimated to expand its reach to at least 60% of American households. Sinclair, another Trump-allied major broadcaster that was behind a particularly infamous PR debacle during Trump’s first administration, is also eyeing a merger and commended the proposed rule change as “common sense.” Both companies also famously refused to air Jimmy Kimmel’s show on their channels late last year after the late-night host’s comments about Charlie Kirk drew ire from the Trump administration.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo[/embed] The FCC will vote on eliminating the rule on August 6th. There are three commissioners, two Republicans and one Democrat. The lone Democratic FCC Commissioner, Anna Gomez, took to X to voice her staunch opposition. “The FCC just announced it will move forward with its unlawful effort to hand control of the public airwaves to billionaire buddies of this administration,” Gomez wrote. “This will destroy local newsrooms, silence community reporting, and drive-up costs for American families.” Even if the action passes the FCC vote, it’s likely to receive pushback from both sides of the aisle in Congress. “Trump’s FCC Chair is trying to illegally rewrite the rules to make it easier for billionaires to line their own pockets while jacking up costs and controlling what Americans watch,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a statement. “After rubber-stamping the Nexstar-Tegna megamerger, this looks like the Trump administration’s latest attempt to roll out the red carpet for more antitrust disasters.”
Critics believe that because the rule was created following Congress’s action, it is up to Congress to determine if it should be retired. But Carr insists that the FCC has the authority to modify or repeal the rule. #FCC #Chairman #Repeal #Key #Rule #Fundamentally #Change #Broadcast #NewsBrendan carr,broadcast television,FCC](https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2262359639-1280x888.jpg "FCC Chairman Wants to Repeal a Key Rule That Would Fundamentally Change Broadcast News
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr wants to repeal a rule that has prevented a select handful of broadcasters from taking full control of the media landscape. Back in 2004, Congress instructed the FCC to enact a national ownership cap that would bar any one broadcast station owner from reaching more than 39% of American households. For more than 20 years, the rule has kept mega mergers in the TV broadcasting industry from gobbling up the entire media ecosystem. Now, Carr is proposing to repeal that national ownership cap rule, which, if successful, would mean broadcast TV giants will pretty much have a green light for mergers, even if it meant that one company would gain access to most of the media landscape. Carr expressed his intentions in an op-ed published by the far-right organization Breitbart. In the op-ed, he claimed that the cap was once helpful in protecting local news stations, but now it was becoming an obstacle as they compete with national news, large streamers, and social media giants.
Instead of a blanket rule, Carr wants to create a new “case-by-case approach.” “Previously, the cap operated as a blanket prohibition on any and all deals that would combine stations in excess of the 39 percent limit—regardless of whether it was a good deal or a bad one for the country,” Carr wrote in the op-ed. “Our new proposal would allow the FCC to approve deals that exceed the 39 percent cap, but only if doing so would promote the public interest.”
Major broadcasters have been lobbying for a change to the rule for quite some time now. One such mega TV broadcasting company that lobbied for the rule change is Nexstar. Earlier this year, the FCC granted Nexstar a waiver for the 39% national ownership cap rule and approved its acquisition of rival Tegna. The merger is still currently facing court challenges over antitrust claims, but if it is finalized, then Nexstar is estimated to expand its reach to at least 60% of American households. Sinclair, another Trump-allied major broadcaster that was behind a particularly infamous PR debacle during Trump’s first administration, is also eyeing a merger and commended the proposed rule change as “common sense.” Both companies also famously refused to air Jimmy Kimmel’s show on their channels late last year after the late-night host’s comments about Charlie Kirk drew ire from the Trump administration.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo[/embed] The FCC will vote on eliminating the rule on August 6th. There are three commissioners, two Republicans and one Democrat. The lone Democratic FCC Commissioner, Anna Gomez, took to X to voice her staunch opposition. “The FCC just announced it will move forward with its unlawful effort to hand control of the public airwaves to billionaire buddies of this administration,” Gomez wrote. “This will destroy local newsrooms, silence community reporting, and drive-up costs for American families.” Even if the action passes the FCC vote, it’s likely to receive pushback from both sides of the aisle in Congress. “Trump’s FCC Chair is trying to illegally rewrite the rules to make it easier for billionaires to line their own pockets while jacking up costs and controlling what Americans watch,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a statement. “After rubber-stamping the Nexstar-Tegna megamerger, this looks like the Trump administration’s latest attempt to roll out the red carpet for more antitrust disasters.”
Critics believe that because the rule was created following Congress’s action, it is up to Congress to determine if it should be retired. But Carr insists that the FCC has the authority to modify or repeal the rule. #FCC #Chairman #Repeal #Key #Rule #Fundamentally #Change #Broadcast #NewsBrendan carr,broadcast television,FCC")
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