If you’d asked me what was scary about robotaxis before the Apollo Go incident on March 31 in Wuhan, China, I could have listed a few awful things. But getting stuck in one never seemed scary. It happened to a Waymo passenger near me last year and the story was sort of whimsical. But boy is getting stuck in a robotaxi on my fear list now. With a bullet.
With some notable exceptions, the robotaxis currently on the road drive like Ned Flanders most of the time, which allows the companies that use them to boast strong safety numbers in aggregate. But we’re slowly learning that robotaxis are an entirely new species in the ecosystem of our roadways, and—crucially—that their failure modes are unprecedented and alien.
According to Wired, there are hundreds of Baidu-owned robotaxis in Wuhan, operated by Baidu’s Apollo Go app-based ride-hailing platform. Tuesday’s incident, Baidu would later say, was caused by a mysterious “system failure.” The crux of it across various media reports is that for unknown reasons, about 100 robotaxis glitched out and came to a complete stop wherever they were, transforming into poorly placed traffic cones with human beings inside.
According to posts on social media, there were some collisions, but according to a police statement that Gizmodo translated with Google Translate, everyone “safely disembarked, and no injuries have been reported.”
如果你在为工作中的失误而懊恼的话
不妨想想这个让全武汉的无人驾驶萝卜快跑罢工还停在路中间的团队（） pic.twitter.com/K0RFBadSkH— 𝓙𝓪𝓬𝓲𝓮 𝓩𝔂𝓽 🌸🏳️ (@Jaciezyt) March 31, 2026
There’s plenty of video online appearing to show the cars stopped in the middle of major streets, but whatever the nature of this failure was, it seems nothing like the overloaded human feedback request system that caused Waymo vehicles to stop in and near blacked-out intersections last year, where traffic was inconvenienced, but at least the affected cars were moving slowly. By contrast, online posts suggest that Baidu’s Apollo Go vehicles stopped in some truly unappealing places—including on busy highways.
NEW: Dozens of robotaxis by Baidu stopped on the road in Wuhan, China, causing crashes 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 to a customer representative. Here’s a dash cam video of one crash.
— Zeyi Yang 杨泽毅 (@zeyiyang.bsky.social) March 31, 2026 at 6:33 PM
Accounts from passengers who suffered through this ordeal are all over the U.S. media now, but the juiciest—and most harrowing—stories seem to have been culled from accounts provided to Chinese TV news, and then recorded by bloggers. CarNewsChina provided the most extensive versions of stories from “Ms. Zhou” and “Mr. Lu” that I could find.
Wuhan is encircled by “Ring Roads,” expressways that are mostly elevated, and completely cut off from any sort of escape route if you get stuck there, like Ms. Zhou and Mr. Lu did. Ring roads aren’t exotic. We have them here in the U.S. Nonetheless, Wuhan’s seem intimidating.
Both passengers report stopping on elevated ring roads. Mr. Lu reported “large trucks speeding past on both sides,” according to CarNewsChina. The wind from all that zooming traffic must have shaken the cars from side to side. In the case of Ms. Zhou, a warning kept popping up telling her not to open her door—which seems like a pretty good warning. Meanwhile over in Mr. Lu’s robotaxi (per CarNewsChina:
“[T]he in-car SOS button was ‘completely useless’ and calls made via the backseat screen were automatically disconnected. After finally reaching the official 400 customer service hotline, he was informed that a specialist would be dispatched. However, after waiting for nearly an hour, no one arrived. Desperate, Mr Lu called the police, who, along with Apollo Go staff, eventually reached him around 11:00 PM, allowing him to safely exit the elevated highway.
Ms. Zhou’s story plays out similarly, but (again, per CarNewsChina) with a shocking twist ending:
Despite the distress, Ms Zhou was still charged the full fare.
If there’s anything good that can come from this story, it’s this: Reports about this incident say it started just before 9:00 p.m. and ended about two hours later—the length of a feature film. That means a high concept horror/thriller from Blumhouse is probably already greenlit. Can’t wait for that.
Gizmodo has reached out to Baidu for comment, and will update this article if we hear back.
