Driverless car from GM’s Cruise and motorcycle collide in San Francisco

Enlarge / Cruise second-generation test vehicles, assembled at GM’s Lake Orion plant in Michigan. (credit: Cruise)

An autonomous vehicle owned by Cruise, the autonomous car startup that was acquired by GM last year, struck a motorcyclist on San Francisco streets earlier this year. According to a filing with the California DMV, the motorcyclist was able to walk away from the crash but reported shoulder pain and was taken to the hospital to receive medical care. Cruise says that police at the scene determined the motorcyclist was at fault for the collision.

The Cruise vehicle was traveling in the middle lane of a three-lane, one-way street in San Francisco’s Lower Haight neighborhood. It spotted a gap in traffic in the left lane and began changing lanes—but then the gap started to close as the vehicle ahead slowed down. So the Cruise car shifted back into the center lane.

Normally, that would be an unremarkable chain of events on San Francisco’s busy streets. Unfortunately, Cruise says, “a motorcycle that had just lane-split between two vehicles in the center and right lanes moved into the center lane.” The motorcycle “glanced the side of the Cruise AV, wobbled, and fell over.”