Autonomous Chevrolet Bolt Involved in Wreck With Motorcyclist

After GM bought Cruise Automation in an effort to speed up its development of autonomous driving technology, it began using Chevrolet Bolts as its test cars. Testing has gone well enough that it expanded its fleet and even recently announced plans to offer autonomous cars for ride-hailing by 2019. But just because things have gone well doesn’t mean they’ve gone perfectly. Earlier this month, an autonomous Bolt was involved in a wreck with a motorcyclist.

According to the California Department of Motor Vehicles report found by ArsTechnica, while driving down a road with three one-way lanes, the Bolt attempted to move from the middle lane to the left lane. As it did so, a minivan in the left lane slowed down, causing the Bolt to pull back into the middle lane to avoid a crash. Unfortunately for the Bolt, at the same time, a motorcyclist tried to lane-split and pass it on the right. As the self-driving car re-centered itself in the lane, it hit the passing motorcycle, causing it to fall over.

According to the report, the Bolt was traveling about 12 mph at the time of the crash, while the motorcycle tried to pass at about 17 mph. The motorcyclist was taken for medical treatment after complaining of shoulder pain but had no major injuries. Because the rider attempted “to overtake and pass another vehicle on the right under conditions that did not permit that movement in safety,” police determined the motorcyclist was at fault.

As usual, the human was the one at fault, but unlike past wrecks with autonomous cars, it seems like this was more a series of unpredictable events than a case where anyone did something wrong. There was room for the Bolt to change lanes, which made room for the motorcycle to pass. Technically, the rider should have waited for the Bolt to complete its lane change, but how could he have predicted that the minivan two lanes over would slow down enough to cause the Bolt to re-center itself in the lane?

And could you reasonably expect a human driver to have done something differently in the same situation? Probably not. But it’s still an unfortunate situation.

Source: ArsTechnica

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