Confused About Automated Driving Features? You’re Not Alone.

**Ryan Knutson** (0:05)
In May of last year, a Ford engineer was driving with her husband near Toledo, Ohio. They were on the freeway in a Ford F-150, and according to them, they were using a hands-free driving feature.

**Ryan Felton** (0:21)
And the way that they describe it, there just was this sort of frantic moment where they said that they had this BlueCruise feature on a Ford from Ford System engaged at the time, and they couldn't figure out how to turn it off.

**Ryan Knutson** (0:36)
That's our colleague Ryan Felton. According to court records he reviewed, the driver said he tapped the brakes. But instead of stopping, the truck accelerated.
The truck ended up crashing into a guardrail. Police body camera footage showed it had flipped completely upside down.

**Ryan Felton** (0:53)
Are they responding?

**Ryan Knutson** (0:54)
Yeah, they're both good. They're just trapped.

**Ryan Felton** (0:57)
It was just a very, you know, scary crash just visually to see and just imagine that someone's truck just, as they put it, acted erratically and then kind of flipped over.

**Ryan Knutson** (1:09)
Emergency responders extricated the couple from the car. They were put in the hospital. And the Ford engineer's husband needed surgery and wore a neck brace after. That's according to court records and police filings.
The driver thought the crash was caused by a malfunction with the car's automated driving tech, BlueCruise.

**Ryan Felton** (1:30)
Based on their statements, there was an absolute disconnect between what they thought the truck was doing versus what it was actually doing. And in the end, they experienced this pretty treacherous crash.

**Ryan Knutson** (1:42)
Ford told federal regulators that BlueCruise wasn't engaged, and the driver actually pressed the gas pedal.
But our colleague Ryan says that the story of the driver in Toledo points to a bigger issue that this technology, which is supposed to make driving safer, is in some cases making drivers confused. And that confusion has contributed to accidents. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knutson. It's Wednesday, July 29th.
Coming up on the show, cars are becoming more hands-free. Some drivers are struggling to adjust.

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**Ryan Knutson** (3:47)
These days, there's a wide spectrum of what automated driving technology means. On one end, you have fully autonomous taxis like Waymo that have no driver at all. And on the other, there are driver assistance technologies that control some aspects of driving, like braking, highway steering, and adaptive cruise control.
Tesla's have full self-driving while supervised. GM has something called Super Cruise. And Ford has BlueCruise. It works on certain highways.

**Ryan Felton** (4:18)
BlueCruise is kind of like an add-on feature. It handles steering, speed, plus the third option is being able to go hands-free.

**Ryan Knutson** (4:28)
This kind of technology, which many safety advocates believe makes driving safer, really started taking shape in the auto industry about a decade ago.
The hope was that self-driving cars would eventually be mass-produced and ultimately reduce accidents and save lives. The first company to mainstream some of this technology was Tesla, with a system called Autopilot.

**SPEAKER_6** (4:49)
So we've been able to accelerate Autopilot and bring its market faster than originally anticipated.

**Ryan Knutson** (4:57)
It wasn't fully autonomous driving, but Autopilot could control a Tesla's speed and even turn the steering wheel. The drivers were still supposed to be ready to take over at any moment.

**SPEAKER_6** (5:07)
So we integrate those four systems and the car can do almost anything.

**Ryan Felton** (5:12)
Tesla's technology really started this wave of every automaker now, coming up with their own branded technology.

**Ryan Knutson** (5:22)
While Tesla's tech was first getting on the road, it seemed like a completely self-driving future was just on the horizon.