Enlarge / BlueCruise allows drivers to take their hands off the wheel but not their eyes off the road. (credit: Ford)

The federal regulator responsible for road safety has opened yet another probe into the safety of a hands-free driver assistance system, we learned this morning. And no, it's not a system from Tesla. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defects Investigation has opened a preliminary investigation into Ford's BlueCruise system, following a pair of fatal crashes, both of which occurred at night.

Ford first introduced BlueCruise in 2021 . Like the similar General Motors Super Cruise, but unlike Tesla Autopilot, BlueCruise has been designed with a tightly controlled operational design domain (ODD) that only allows it to be engaged on restricted access, divided lane highways that have been lidar-mapped in advance.

Additionally, like Super Cruise but unlike Tesla's far more dangerous system, there is an infrared gaze-tracking driver monitoring camera that will disengage the system if it determines the driver is not actually paying attention to the road.

Enlarge / Walter Huang's Model X in a tow yard days after his fatal crash. (credit: NTSB )

Tesla and its controversial Autopilot driver assistance system goes on trial again today in California. It's fighting a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Walter Huang, an Apple engineer who was killed in 2018 when his Tesla Model X drove head-first into a highway gore. But despite the findings of a highly critical National Transportation Safety Board investigation, Tesla may well win in court—California juries let the automaker off the hook in two separate trials last year.

Regular complaints

Huang died on March 23, 2018, when his Model X crashed at 70 mph into a concrete divider on US Highway 101, apparently confused by an interchange with State Highway 85 to its left.

Huang trusted Tesla Autopilot, the carmaker's partially automated driving system that, at the time, combined forward-looking radar and optical sensors to control the car's speed on the road relative to other vehicles and keep it centered within the lane. (In the years since, Tesla has abandoned the use of forward-looking radar, relying on just optical cameras instead.)

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images / Apple / Benj Edwards )

The recent launch of the Apple Vision Pro mixed-reality headset has inspired a number of social media stunts, including a viral video of someone wearing the headset while piloting a Tesla Cybertruck set to self-driving mode. On Monday, this prompted US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg to issue a warning on social media, reports BBC and The New York Times .

"Reminder—ALL advanced driver assistance systems available today require the human driver to be in control and fully engaged in the driving task at all times," Buttigieg wrote on the social media platform X.

The Apple Vision Pro's mixed-reality features combine elements of stereoscopic VR with camera passthrough so users can see the world around them while they use the device. This has led to people experimenting with wearing the goggles while walking around in public and filming the results for TikTok and YouTube.

Enlarge (credit: Mercedes-Benz)

Mercedes-Benz provided flights from New York to Stuttgart, Germany, and a night in a hotel so Alex could visit the Mercedes test facility on the way to a drive event (for a different publication). Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

Something unexpected happened as I looked down to watch two Mercedes-Benz EVs crash into each other: I felt… scared.

It was the culmination of a day spent with Mercedes-Benz discussing the company's plans to fully prevent serious injuries in its vehicles and the first time an automaker publicly conducted a crash test between two EVs, in this case with a select group of journalists in attendance. Witnessing two cars smash into each other would be, at the very least, very exciting.

But I didn't expect to feel my stomach drop in the moment of impact and the dread that lingered after. The experience hammered home the importance of all the safety measures automakers implement in the cars we spend our lives with and how much work goes into engineering the successful outcomes we hope we never have to experience firsthand.

Enlarge / This is the engine bay of a 2018 RAV4 Hybrid, but the problem is not the hybrid traction battery. (credit: Alun Taylor)

There's plenty of fear, uncertainty, and doubt about electric cars and the potential risk of battery fires , but the regular old 12 V battery is responsible for Toyota issuing a recall for more than 1.8 million cars this week.

Toyota says the problem is due to differences in the sizes of replacement batteries—some have smaller tops than others, and if a smaller-top battery isn't held in properly by its clamp, the battery could move under hard cornering, letting the positive terminal contact the clamp, causing a short-circuit and possible fire risk.

The problem affects 2013–2018 RAV4s —about 1,854,000 of them, according to Toyota. The official National Highway Traffic Safety Administration safety recall notice has not yet been posted, but NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation has had an open case looking into the problem since February 2021 , after 11 complaints about "non-crash thermal events" starting in the engine bays of RAV4s.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

After making lots of headlines due to the extremely easy-to-steal nature of some of its cheapest models, Hyundai has a new headache. The Korean automaker is recalling 1.6 million cars in the US after 21 vehicle fires and 22 thermal incidents that have taken place since 2017.

The past couple of years have seen a lot of scaremongering from the anti-electric vehicle crowd. One such nonsensical claim is that EVs will be too heavy for multistory parking lots, but all too often, it's know-nothings or people with an agenda claiming—in the face of actual data—that EVs are a fire risk. On planet Earth, though, the risk of a car fire in a gasoline-powered vehicle is far higher, representing the majority of the 300,000 car fires that occur in the US each year.

This is one such case. The problem is down to an ABS module, or more specifically, the O-rings on the ABS module motor shaft.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Not all vehicle occupants are protected equally when it comes to car crashes. Until 2017, cars weren't even routinely crash-tested on the passenger side , just the driver's. There's still other low-hanging fruit, too; thousands of rear-seat passengers die in cars each year in the United States because they're not wearing seat belts, despite decades of evidence on the effectiveness of buckling up. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has now had enough and has proposed a new rule that would mean new cars, trucks, and even some buses would need to have seat belt warning alerts for all occupants, not just the driver.

Seat belts have been mandatory equipment for all seats in cars and trucks (but not buses) since 1968, thanks to the US Department of Transport. But the US has lagged behind much of the world when it comes to requiring their use; this is determined at the state level, and it wasn't until 1984 that New York became the first US state to require seat belt use.

Since then , 48 other states, along with the District of Columbia, now require front seat occupants to wear belts—New Hampshire remains unconvinced—but a total of 10 states don't require rear passengers to wear seat belts by law.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Tesla | Airplane!)

On July 3, 2023, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration made public a letter it sent Tesla in August 2022, demanding that the company provide updated responses to some questions. NHTSA is investigating the performance of Tesla's Autopilot driver assistance system after identifying more than a dozen crashes in which Tesla vehicles struck stopped emergency vehicles . The agency is also investigating whether Tesla vehicles adequately ensure drivers are paying attention when using the Autopilot system.

Following a string of notable crashes, NHTSA officially initiated an investigation into Tesla's Autopilot system. And on July 3 , NHTSA wrote to Tesla again, asking the automaker for updated information by July 19. As far as anyone can tell, that didn't happen.

Recalls galore

If NHTSA decides to issue a recall, it wouldn’t be the first time. Tesla has faced a significant number of recalls over the past decade, covering various issues ranging from seatbelts to battery-related concerns.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Tesla's Autopilot driver assistance feature is the subject of yet another federal safety investigation. Although the details are scarce, Reuters reports that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened an investigation into a fatal crash in California involving a 2018 Tesla Model 3 sedan. This follows another safety investigation that was opened by NHTSA in March concerning a fatal crash of a 2014 Tesla Model S, also in California.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has often claimed that the cars his company makes are the "safest car[s] on the road," but there have been hundreds of fatal crashes involving Tesla electric vehicles since 2013, and at least 32 deaths in the US and another three abroad have occurred while Autopilot was active.

On its website, Tesla promotes Autopilot as a safety feature, writing :