If you had asked me what was scary about robotaxis before the Apollo Go incident on March 31 in Wuhan, China, could have listed some awful things. But getting stuck in one never seemed scary. It happened to a Waymo rider near me last year and the story was something capricious. But the boy is now trapped in a robotaxi on my fear list. With a bullet.
With some notable exceptionsThe robotaxis currently in circulation drive like Ned Flanders most of the time, allowing the companies that use them to show off solid safety figures overall. But we are slowly learning that robotaxis are a completely new species in our road ecosystem and, more importantly, that their failure modes are unprecedented and strange.
According to WiredThere are hundreds of Baidu-owned robotaxis in Wuhan, operated by Baidu’s Apollo Go app-based ride-hailing platform. Tuesday’s incident, Baidu. later I would sayIt was caused by a mysterious “system failure.” The gist of the matter in various media reports is that, for unknown reasons, around 100 robotaxis malfunctioned and came to a complete stop wherever they were, transforming into poorly placed traffic cones with humans inside.
According to posts on social media, there were some collisions, but according to a police statement that Gizmodo translated with Google Translate, everyone “disembarked safely and no injuries were reported.”
If you are upset by mistakes at work
You might also think of this team that made the autonomous carrots in Wuhan go on strike and stop in the middle of the road () pic.twitter.com/K0RFBadSkH— 𝓙𝓪𝓬𝓲𝓮 𝓩𝔂𝓽 🌸🏳️ (@Jaciezyt) March 31, 2026
There are many videos online that appear to show the Cars stopped in the middle of the main streets.but whatever the nature of this failure, it is nothing like the overloaded human feedback request system That caused Waymo vehicles to stall last year at and near closed intersections, where traffic was inconvenient, but at least the affected cars were moving slowly. By contrast, online posts suggest that Baidu’s Apollo Go vehicles stopped in some truly unattractive places, including busy highways.
NEW: Dozens of Baidu robotaxis stopped on the highway in Wuhan, China, causing accidents on highways and trapping passengers in the cars, some for more than an hour. One passenger told me it took her 30 minutes to even connect with a customer service representative. Here is dash cam video of an accident.
— Zeyi Yang 杨泽毅 (@zeyiyang.bsky.social) March 31, 2026 at 6:33 p.m.
Accounts of passengers who suffered this ordeal are now all over the American media, but the juiciest (and heartbreaking) stories appear to have been culled from accounts provided to Chinese television news and then recorded by bloggers. CarNewsChina I provided the longest versions of “Mrs. Zhou” and “Mr. Lu” stories that I could find.
Wuhan is surrounded by “ring roads,” mostly elevated highways and completely cut off from any kind of escape route if you get stuck there, as Ms. Zhou and Mr. Lu did. Ring roads are not exotic. We have them here in the USA. However, those in Wuhan seem intimidating.
Both passengers report stopping on elevated bypass roads. Mr. Lu reported that “large trucks were speeding by on both sides,” according to CarNewsChina. The wind generated by all that high-speed traffic must have shaken the cars back and forth. In Ms. Zhou’s case, a warning kept popping up telling her not to open the door, which seems like a pretty good warning. Meanwhile, in Mr. Lu’s robotaxi (according to CarNewsChina:
“(T)he car’s SOS button was ‘completely useless’ and calls made through the rear seat screen were automatically disconnected. After finally contacting the official 400 customer service hotline, he was informed that a specialist would be sent. However, after waiting for almost an hour, no one arrived. Desperate, Mr. Lu called the police, who, together with Apollo Go staff, finally reached him around 11:00 p.m., allowing him to leave safely. safe elevated highway.
Ms. Zhou’s story unfolds in a similar way, but (again, according to CarNewsChina) with a surprising ending:
Despite the distress, Ms. Zhou was charged the full fee.
If there is one good thing that can come from this story, it is this: Reports about this incident say that it began shortly before 9:00 pm and ended approximately two hours later, the length of a movie. That means a High-concept horror/thriller from Blumhouse. You’ve probably already gotten the green light. I can’t wait for that.
Gizmodo has contacted Baidu for comment and will update this article if we receive a response.
