{"id":67584,"date":"2026-04-02T15:36:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T15:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/mass-robotaxi-malfunction-halts-traffic-in-chinese-city"},"modified":"2026-04-02T16:50:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T16:50:00","slug":"mass-robotaxi-malfunction-halts-traffic-in-chinese-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/mass-robotaxi-malfunction-halts-traffic-in-chinese-city","title":{"rendered":"Mass Robotaxi Malfunction Halts Traffic in Chinese City"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"ap-article-header-tag\"> <strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Lesotho. <\/strong> <\/span>A mass robotaxi outage in the Chinese city of Wuhan caused at least a hundred self-driving cars to stop mid-traffic, sparking renewed debate around the safety of driverless vehicles.<\/p>\n<p>Local police said initial findings suggested a &#8220;system malfunction&#8221; caused multiple vehicles to stop in the middle of the road on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Videos on social media have documented the outage, with one appearing to show it resulting in a highway collision, although police said no injuries had been reported and passengers exited their vehicles safely.<\/p>\n<p>Baidu did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<p>According to the police statement, posted on social media site Weibo, the cause of the incident is still under further investigation.<\/p>\n<p>Baidu operates its Apollo Go driverless taxi service in dozens of cities across the world, mostly in China.<\/p>\n<p>In December 2025, ride-sharing apps Uber and Lyft announced partnerships with the Chinese technology giant to test its Apollo Go cars on UK roads, aiming to start trials in 2026.<\/p>\n<p>However, both still need approval from regulators before they can begin the pilot programmes.<\/p>\n<p>While driverless tech may be safer on average than human drivers, this incident showed it could &#8220;still go wrong in completely new ways,&#8221; said Jack Stilgoe, professor of science and technology policy at University College London.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If we&#8217;re going to make good choices about this technology, we need to understand entirely new types of risk,&#8221; he told BBC News.<\/p>\n<p>The outage is not the first time self-driving cars have faced technical difficulties.<\/p>\n<p>In December 2025, a large power outage in San Francisco led Waymo taxis to stop working around the city, causing huge traffic jams.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile in August 2025, an Apollo Go robotaxi carrying a passenger in Chongqing fell into a construction pit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ap-article-footer-note\">Find more news and analyses on <span class=\"ap-highlight-country\">Lesotho<\/span> on the <span class=\"ap-highlight-brand\">Africa Press<\/span> website<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Lesotho. A mass robotaxi outage in the Chinese city of Wuhan caused at least a hundred self-driving cars to stop mid-traffic, sparking renewed debate around the safety of driverless vehicles. Local police said initial findings suggested a &#8220;system malfunction&#8221; caused multiple vehicles to stop in the middle of the road on Tuesday. Videos [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":67583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[245],"class_list":["post-67584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-miscellaneous","tag-lesotho"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Mass Robotaxi Malfunction Halts Traffic in Chinese City - Lesotho<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"-article-header-tag&quot;&gt; Africa-Press - Lesotho. 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