Robotaxi outage in China leaves passengers stranded on highways

Unknown technology The problem caused a number of robotaxis Owned by the Chinese technology giant Baidu On Tuesday, traffic froze in traffic, leaving some passengers trapped in vehicles for more than an hour.

In Wuhan, a city in central China where Baidu has deployed hundreds of Apollo Go self-driving taxis, people on Chinese social media reported seeing the cars suddenly malfunction and stop working. photo and videos An online joint view of Baidu cars stopping on busy highways, often in the fast lane.

A college student in Wuhan told WIRED she was stuck in a Baidu robo-taxi with two friends for about 90 minutes on Tuesday. (She asked to be identified by her last name only, to protect her privacy.) The student says that the car broke down and stopped four or five times during the trip before finally stopping in front of an intersection in eastern Wuhan. Fortunately, the road was not crowded, and the group was not in immediate danger. The car’s display screen told passengers to remain in the car with their seat belts on and wait for a company representative to arrive “in five minutes,” according to a photo he shared with WIRED.

He says it took about 30 minutes to reach a Baidu customer representative by phone. “They kept saying their bosses would be informed. But they didn’t explain the reason for (the outage) or tell us how long we needed to wait for staff to arrive,” he says. But no one ever came, and after another hour of waiting, the three passengers decided to get out and go home on their own (the doors were not locked).

On Chinese social media, other passengers also complained about being unable to access Baidu customer support. “I tried every way I could think of to call for help using the options the app showed, but the phone line didn’t work, and when I pressed the SOS button it told me it was unavailable. So what exactly is SOS for?” one person wrote in a post on rednote Next to a video showing the button not working. She said she had to force open the door and get out of the car as traffic came to a standstill until it came to a complete stop behind her robo-taxi. “Apollo Joe, you really owe me an apology,” she wrote.

Baidu did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Local police in Wuhan issued a statement around midnight in China saying the situation was “likely caused by a system glitch,” but the incident was still under investigation. Police added that no one was injured and all passengers were exited from the vehicles. It is not clear how many Baidu payment vehicles may have been affected.

One Dash Cam recording posted on RedNote shows a car passing 16 Apollo Go vehicles parked on the road within 90 minutes. On several occasions, the video shows the driver avoiding a collision with the taxi by braking or changing lanes at the last minute.

It seems that others were not so lucky. In another RedNote post, a man claimed to have crashed into one of Baidu’s disabled vehicles. The man wrote in the caption that he was driving at over 40 mph on a highway when the car in front of him suddenly changed lanes to avoid a stopped robo-taxi. He couldn’t react fast enough and ended up crashing into the self-driving car. Pictures of the orange SUV that the man was driving while it was being towed show that the right front fender of the car was completely torn off, and other parts appear to have been severely damaged.