More than 100 Baidu robotaxis came to a stop in the middle of Wuhan's highways

On Tuesday, multiple robo-taxis operated by the Chinese company Baidu were reportedly frozen and unable to move in the middle of highways in Wuhan. Passengers were trapped inside the automated taxis for several hours, afraid to exit the vehicles in the middle of busy highways. Local police said that the robotaxi outage was due to a "system failure," but further investigation is underway.

It is reported that more than 100 passengers were affected by this incident, with several calling the police for assistance. Some local media outlets reported that the outage lasted more than two hours, during which passengers were trapped inside the robo-taxis. Police officers said that, while at least one accident occurred due to frozen taxis, no injuries were reported.

In a statement to the Shanghai-based news outlet The Paper, a local police officer said that at least 100 Apollo Go robo-taxis were affected by what they are labeling a drastic "system failure." It is also reported that, although the taxi doors could be opened manually, passengers were afraid to do so because the car was stuck in the middle of a busy highway.

Dashcam footage posted on X (formerly Twitter) by user @ZeyiYang clearly shows a crash on a busy highway in Wuhan caused by a Baidu robotaxi that has stopped in the second lane. It is unclear whether the taxi hit the brakes immediately before impact or was already standing still when the vehicle approached it from behind. In any case, this was a catastrophic system failure that put dozens, if not hundreds, of lives at risk.

The whole incident casts serious doubt on the feasibility of self-driving taxis. There have been multiple incidents over the past few years in which self-driving cars failed and caused accidents, but none have posed as much danger as the incident in Wuhan. It is imperative that lawmakers re-evaluate the feasibility and readiness of self-driving transportation before things spiral out of control.