{"id":359444,"date":"2026-04-02T00:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T00:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/359444\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T00:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T00:50:08","slug":"driverless-robotaxis-malfunction-on-chinese-motorway-leaving-passengers-stuck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/359444\/","title":{"rendered":"Driverless robotaxis malfunction on Chinese motorway, leaving passengers stuck"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cSo then, what exactly is the SOS for?\u201d<\/p>\n
Some passengers remained in their Baidu robotaxis for nearly two hours while they waited for help. Photo \/ Byron_Wan<\/p>\n
A video verified by Reuters was posted on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, showing vehicles stopped on a highway, blocking traffic.<\/p>\n
The vehicles were travelling normally when they abruptly stopped and displayed a message on screen: \u201cDriving system malfunction. Staff are expected to arrive in 5 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Daily Mail reported the cars had stalled on a major road that operates without traffic lights \u2013 a design intended to keep traffic moving at speed.<\/p>\n
Car doors could open but the people inside were too scared to get out because of speeding traffic and called the cops for assistance, a police officer told the Paper, a Shanghai-based newspaper.<\/p>\n
The robotaxis are operated by Chinese technology company Baidu, which uses artificial intelligence to control the vehicles without a human driver.<\/p>\n
Passengers did not feel safe to leave the cars on the busy motorway. Photo \/ Byron_Wan<\/p>\n
Baidu operates more than 1000 robotaxis, mostly in China. The company has not commented on the incident.<\/p>\n
A Baidu taxi fell into a construction site in Chongqing in August 2025 with a passenger inside.<\/p>\n
In May 2025, a car run by Pony.ai caught fire on a road in Beijing, the Daily Mail reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cSo then, what exactly is the SOS for?\u201d Some passengers remained in their Baidu robotaxis for nearly two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[74,46300,138,11776,607,4444,6097,6183,44867,35702,62380,2845,189696,3945,111,139,69,90,29459,123063,96261,29460,4248,24927],"class_list":["post-359444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-after","tag-broke","tag-business","tag-busy","tag-china","tag-chinese","tag-down","tag-dozens","tag-driverless","tag-exit","tag-glitch","tag-leaving","tag-malfunction","tag-motorway","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-passengers","tag-robotaxis","tag-safely","tag-stuck","tag-technical","tag-unable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}