Irish Taxi Forum
Public Area => Taxi Talk => Topic started by: watty on April 01, 2026, 04:54:16 pm
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Taxis stopping in the middle of the road with their hazard lights on. Would never happen here :P
Mass robotaxi malfunction halts traffic in Chinese city (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvge91r9j80o)
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 "system malfunction" caused multiple vehicles to stop in the middle of the road on Tuesday. 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. Baidu did not immediately respond to a request for comment. According to the police statement, posted on social media site Weibo, the cause of the incident is still under further investigation.
Baidu operates its Apollo Go driverless taxi service in dozens of cities across the world, mostly in China. 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. However, both still need approval from regulators before they can begin the pilot programmes.
While driverless tech may be safer on average than human drivers, this incident showed it could "still go wrong in completely new ways," said Jack Stilgoe, professor of science and technology policy at University College London. "If we're going to make good choices about this technology, we need to understand entirely new types of risk," he told BBC News.
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.
oops
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this attempt at robot cars is just like the germans thinkin they could go after russia in ww2 in my opinion. it's not gonna end well.
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+1. They might get there in the end but humans are messy & chaotic. Can't program that.
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Just today - Cyclist, 20s, dies after collision with truck in Dublin (https://www.rte.ie/news/regional/2026/0401/1566303-collision-abbey-street/)
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One woman was stuck in her Chinese taxi for 2 hours and had to call the police to get out...
https://gizmodo.com/getting-stuck-inside-a-glitching-robotaxi-is-a-whole-new-thing-to-be-scared-of-2000740644
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.
I wonder if Michael O'Leary has a stake in the company :P
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Watty Big Dommo is in one of them Do nothing Cars and the Traffic Lights are Broken because The One We dont Mention has robbed the Copper Cable .If the Cars on board Computers cannot get instructions from the Lights to Stop or advance will they just close down for safety reasons or will they guess and go .
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The Chinese Govt can shut down all the MGs, BYDs, Xpengs, etc all over the world at the touch of a button.
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Watty Big Dommo is in one of them Do nothing Cars and the Traffic Lights are Broken because The One We dont Mention has robbed the Copper Cable .If the Cars on board Computers cannot get instructions from the Lights to Stop or advance will they just close down for safety reasons or will they guess and go .
Most of them 'phone home' to a human operator in a call centre for instructions in cases like that. It's robocars' dirty little secret at the moment. Only Tesla, I think, uses American humans. Some of the others go cheap and hire Philipinos to monitor the cars.