Baidu's Apollo Go robotaxi service experienced a widespread technical failure on Tuesday in Wuhan, China, causing multiple self-driving vehicles to abruptly stop mid-traffic. Passengers reported being trapped inside the unmanned cars for up to 90 minutes, with some stranded on busy highways. A college student identified only as He said her vehicle stopped repeatedly during a trip before finally halting at an intersection, where the in-car display instructed passengers to stay put and wait for a representative "in five minutes." Despite repeated attempts, He said it took 30 minutes to reach a customer service agent, who offered no explanation or estimated time for assistance. No staff arrived, and the group eventually exited the unlocked vehicle themselves. On social media, users shared videos showing Apollo Go cars blocking lanes and SOS buttons failing during emergencies. One RedNote user claimed she had to force her way out as traffic piled up behind her. Another driver reported crashing into a stopped robotaxi after swerving vehicles ahead caused a chain reaction at over 40 mph. His SUV sustained heavy front-end damage and was towed. Wuhan police stated the incident was likely due to a system malfunction, with no injuries reported. The scale of the outage remains unclear, but one dashcam video captured 16 Apollo Go vehicles parked motionless within 90 minutes on a single stretch of road.
When Baidu's robotaxis freeze in the middle of a highway and the SOS button reads "unavailable," that isn't just a glitch — it's a failure of trust in autonomous systems. The fact that passengers were left stranded without real-time support, despite being told help was minutes away, exposes a critical gap between self-driving technology and reliable human oversight. For companies like Apollo Go aiming for large-scale deployment, uptime and emergency response are as important as the AI itself. Any future rollout in dense urban environments, whether in China or elsewhere, will need far more robust fail-safes than what was on display in Wuhan.
