Rampant malfunctions on robotaxi operations in the Chinese city of Wuhan are now raising questions about the safety with driverless vehicles. According to reports, at least a hundred self-driving cars develop faults, stopping mid-traffic and raising renewed debate around the safety of such machines. Local police said initial findings suggested a “system malfunction” caused multiple vehicles to stop in the middle of the road last week.
Authorities citing videos on social media said such traffic hitches as a result of outages on self-driving vehicles had been documented, with one appearing to show it resulting to a highway collision, though with no injuries reported so far and passengers exited their vehicles safely.
A police statement posted on social media site, Weibo, said the cause of the incident was still under further investigation. Chinese multinational technology company, Baidu, which operates its Apollo Go driverless taxi service in dozens of cities across the world, mostly in China, is yet to issue a statement on the development.
Report has it that ridesharing apps, Uber and Lyft, in December 2025 announced partnerships with the Chinese technology giant to test its Apollo Go cars on UK roads, with the aim of starting trials in 2026. However, both still need approval from regulators before they can begin the pilot programmes.
Reuters said it recorded photos and videos posts by social media users of Apollo Go cars stranded in the middle of the roads due to the outage.
Professor of Science and Technology Policy at University College London, Jack Stilgoe 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.” The outage is not the first time self-driving cars have faced technical difficulties.
In December 2025, a large power outage in San Francisco led Waymo taxis to stop working around the city, causing huge traffic jams. Meanwhile, in August 2025, an Apollo Go robotaxi carrying a passenger in Chongqing fell into a construction pit.
