EQUAL Pennsylvania Police double murder charges against a woman for a fatal crash in March were announced, saying she used a number of driving assistance function could be found in her car, a Ford Mustang Mach-E. State and federal investigators said the woman intersection crashed into a parked car of a man who had stopped on my left shoulder-95 to help a driver whose car broke down in front of him. The collisionThe incident happened around 3 a.m., killing both men.
In a statement released on September 3, Pennsylvania State Police said the driver was using Ford’s Blue Cruise Advanced Safety TechnologyBut she should be prepared to take over control of the car no matter what, according to Press Links“Any partially automated vehicle technology should never be allowed to perform the driving tasks necessary to safely navigate” the roads they are on, an officer said.
Investigators believe 23-year-old medical student Dimple Patel was driving her Mustang at about 71 mph when the crash occurred while both Blue Cruise and adaptive cruise control engaged. Now she has to face multiple feesincluding drunken driving homicide and manslaughter, the AP reported.
A defense attorney has argued that the deaths may actually have been Ford’s fault, not Patel’s. He spoke to Press Links on his theory:
Defense attorney Zak Goldstein said he had not yet seen a criminal complaint or any reports about the crash, and called the deaths a tragedy. But he noted that, generally, Pennsylvania’s law on DUI-related homicides requires that “DUI was the cause of the homicide.”
“If it turns out that it was the fault of the self-driving system or the driver, then it may not be a DUI homicide even if the driver was drunk,” he said, adding that he had not seen any legislation on the issue in Pennsylvania.
Since this accident, Ford has cooperated with both NTSB And National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Currently, NHTSA is looking into how Blue Cruise performs its duties as well as its camera-based driver monitoring system. This is the second time this year that a Mustang Mach-E crashed into a parked car at night, according to Press LinksThe National Transportation Safety Board is currently investigating.
