GM’s self-driving efforts have hit a legal setback. It appears that a motorcyclist involved in a crash last month in San Francisco with a Cruise Automation self-driving vehicle has now filed a lawsuit against General Motors.
On Tuesday, The Mercury News reported that Oscar Nilsson has sued GM over the Dec. 2, 2017 crash, claiming he was injured while riding behind a Cruise Automation Chevrolet Bolt that had someone in the driver’s seat, but did not have their hands on the steering wheel. The car started to change lanes into the left, but abruptly returned to the initial lane and collided with Nilsson.
Nilsson claims that the crash resulted in injuries that have forced him to take disability leave from work, according to The Mercury News. When looking at the details of the crash report filed by GM to the California Department of Motor Vehicles, it contradicts Nilsson’s claims. GM reported that the Bolt had stopped a requested lane change and was trying to center itself in the initial lane it was traveling in when Nilsson, “wobbled and fell over,” when trying to lane split. In GM’s report, they put the blame of the incident on Nilsson.
We reached out to both Cruise Automation and GM for comments and will update this when we hear back. So far, they have not responded to our requests.