'I was stuck on the overpass with dump trucks all around me': A mass Baidu robotaxi outage just caused traffic mayhem in China
Collisions, delays and traffic chaos reported due to robotaxi outagePolice said system malfunction caused multiple vehicles to stopBaidu has a fleet of more than 500 driverless cars in Wuhan
A mass robotaxi outage in the Chinese city of Wuhan has reportedly caused traffic chaos, after several fully autonomous cabs suddenly came to a standstill.
Some distressed riders claimed they were left stranded for hours, as multiple driverless rides ground to a halt.
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According to preliminary findings, the police claim that a "system outage" had caused the issue, but there has so far been no official comment from Baidu about the incident.
According to the robotaxi rider, the cab stopped four of five times during the trip, before it parked up in front of an intersection with the screens telling all riders to remain onboard for a company representative to come online.
Apparently, it took the customers 30 minutes to reach a customer services representative. After even more waiting, the passengers decided to get out of the cab and find an alternative route.
Further videos that have appeared on social media, including X, appear to show dash cam footage of a driver crashing into the back of a stranded Baidu car, which had come to rest in the middle of a busy, multi-lane highway.
On the Chinese social media platform RedNote, one rider said: “I called robotaxi’s customer service, but couldn’t get through at first. After calling repeatedly, everyone I called said they had dispatched a specialist. After 10.30pm, my order was cancelled, and I was stuck on the overpass with dump trucks all around me.”
Analysis: Not a great look for robotaxis
With the likes of Waymo, Zoox and Uber all forging ahead with autonomous taxi services, the system outage (and ensuing chaos) experienced by Baidu doesn't paint a particularly reassuring picture.
Robotaxi skeptics have long warned about software and technical glitches of this nature, as well as the real threat of cyber attacks that could theoretically take control of entire fleets of driverless vehicles.
Jack Stilgoe, professor of science and technology policy at University College London told the BBC that while driverless tech "may be safer on average" than human drivers, this incident showed it could "still go wrong in completely new ways".
"If we're going to make good choices about this technology, we need to understand entirely new types of risk," he added.
After all, this isn't the first time we have seen negative headlines around autonomous driving technology.
According to Futurism, Tesla's Robotaxi service has been crashing more than equivalent cabs with a human driver, despite having a safety monitor sat behind the wheel.
In addition to this, Waymo experienced a similar issue in San Francisco last year, where a massive power outage caused a number of Waymo cars to come to a halt in the middle of busy streets and intersections due to the fact that they didn't know how to safely navigate without functioning road signs and traffic lights.
