Motorcyclist Oscar Nilsson might not have been going fast when he and an autonomous Chevrolet Bolt EV collided, but he was quick to point the finger and assign fault to the prototype vehicle. A General Motors spokesperson indicated that, based on the police report, the automaker does not believe its vehicle was to blame. Now Nilsson is suing GM.
The accident happened in San Francisco, where GM has been testing vehicles equipped with self-driving technology developed by its Cruise Automation division. Unlike the Las Vegas autonomous-shuttle crash in November, during which a truck backed into a stationary self-driving bus, both Nilsson and the Bolt EV were in motion when this accident occurred.
The accounts of the event, which occurred on December 7, are a point of contention in the lawsuit. According to the accident report filed by GM, the Bolt EV was driving in the center of a three-lane street in front of Nilsson on his 1996 Honda S90 motorcycle. The car attempted to change into the left lane, but when it sensed the gap was too small, it corrected back into the center lane. There is no indication of how turn signals were or weren’t used. At the same time, Nilsson, who had been lane-splitting the center and right lanes, accelerated into the center lane. The Bolt, at 12 mph, bumped Nilsson, going 17 mph, and Nilsson fell off his motorcycle. One of Cruise Automation’s human Autonomous Vehicle Trainers was in the front seat when the events unfolded, but, as...