Self-Driving Chevy Bolt Spares Adorable Raccoon's Life

General Motors has been pretty up front with releasing raw (sped-up) footage of its autonomous Chevy Bolt EVs driving around town. The latest clip released this week shows a close-call with the car and a risky raccoon looking to get across the road.

As Automotive News notes, it’s the first video to show the autonomous Bolt driving at night, and the vehicle comes across cyclists, double-parked cars and crappy drivers cutting it off.

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Automotive News thinks the vehicle appears to slows down for the raccoon, but I’m wondering how it would’ve performed if it didn’t happen to also be approaching a stop sign when the raccoon darted out.

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Here’s more from Automotive News:

An “autonomous-vehicle trainer” sits behind the steering wheel, ready to take the wheel but has not needed to intervene in any videos yet. An engineer in the passenger seat takes notes and GM President Dan Ammann sat in the rear seat in the latest video, said Kevin Kelly, GM advanced technology communications spokesman.

GM has been testing Bolt vehicles with Cruise, which it acquired in March 2016, on roads in Detroit, San Francisco and Scottsdale, Ariz., near Phoenix.

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The latest video comes as news emerged of GM’s ambitions to roll out the largest autonomous fleet—300 vehicles in all—across the testing sites in Detroit, San Francisco and Scottsdale. GM wouldn’t comment on the apparent plan, but the latest video affirms what we said last week, that it’s clearly serious about making AVs work.

You can check out the video below.