A sudden glitch froze nearly 100 Baidu robotaxis in Wuhan traffic, stranding riders and triggering major roadway chaos now under investigation.
Woopsies indeed — a full‑blown robotaxi meltdown brought Wuhan traffic to a chaotic standstill. A massive glitch hit Baidu’s Apollo Go fleet, freezing around 100 driverless vehicles in the middle of fast‑moving roads and intersections. Passengers were left stuck inside unmoving cars while human drivers swerved, braked, and piled up around them.
The scene looked surreal: rows of empty‑front‑seat taxis sitting motionless as horns blared and traffic backed up for blocks. Riders inside had no way to override the system, no steering wheel to grab, and no human driver to intervene — just a frozen interface and a city grinding to a halt around them.
The malfunction spread across multiple vehicles at once, raising serious questions about fleet‑wide synchronization, network dependency, and what happens when a centralized system hiccups at scale. A single glitch became a citywide gridlock.
Officials have confirmed the incident is under investigation, with Baidu reviewing logs, connectivity data, and system behavior to determine what triggered the mass freeze. For now, the event stands as one of the most dramatic real‑world stress tests of autonomous transit — and a reminder that even the smartest cars can have very dumb days.
Watch the Robotaxi Meltdown in Wuhan
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Drop a comment — would you trust a robotaxi after watching 100 of them freeze in the middle of traffic?
