The top federal vehicle safety regulator has sent Ford an exhaustive list of questions about its hands-free driver-assistance system known as BlueCruise. It's the latest development in an investigation that started more than one year ago following two fatal crashes involving the software. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) sent a letter to Ford on June 18 that contains 25 questions. Many of them are basic, such as asking Ford for a detailed list of vehicles that have been equipped with BlueCruise. But the NHTSA also wants internal Ford documents related to the crashes that sparked the probe, the development of BlueCruise, descriptions of any changes made to the software, and much more. It's the first 'information request' that the NHTSA has sent Ford since it upgraded the investigation in January to a level known as an 'engineering analysis.' That progression is a required step before NHTSA can ask Ford to issue a...
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