Asia Tech Wire (July 10) -- A collision occurred with a robotaxi of Chinese search engine giant Baidu just as it was making a major expansion push.
On Sunday afternoon, a Wuhan netizen posted a video of a robotaxi operated by Baidu's robotaxi service platform Apollo Go colliding with a pedestrian on a Wuhan street, according to several Chinese media reports.
A pedestrian can be seen lying in front of the taxi in that video, and traffic police are on the scene, with the accident causing some vehicle congestion.
Baidu confirmed the accident on Monday, saying "it was a slight contact between the vehicle and a pedestrian who ran a red light while the green light was on to start."
"After the accident the company immediately cooperated with the police to deal with, and accompanied [the person] to the hospital for examination, who is currently in the hospital for further observation and rest," Baidu said.
An expert said in this regard, "In terms of accidents caused by autonomous driving, there is no relatively clear and unified delineation at the current policy level, and the division of responsibility for [accidents] involving different levels of automatic driving from L2 to L4 is also different."
This person said, with reference to the latest rules in Beijing, accidents occurring in the L4 autonomous driving, if no one in the car, the police will trace the responsibility of the vehicle owner and manager.
Apollo Go is the self-driving mobility service platform launched by Baidu's self-driving division Apollo, which has launched a manned test operation service in 11 cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, as well as Wuhan and Chongqing.
Back in 2022, there was an incident of Baidu's driverless test car crashing.
And Wuhan citizens have made hundreds of complaints against Apollo Go, alleging that its driverless vehicles stalled on green lights, rushed into the center of intersections on red lights, and got stuck and immobilized when turning, and triggered traffic congestion.
Although self-driving technology has faced a lot of controversy, this does not affect its rapid development trend.
According to Pacific Securities forecast, in 2025 and 2030, robotaxi's market size in China is expected to exceed 1.18 trillion yuan and 2.93 trillion yuan, respectively, and will become one of the autonomous driving scenarios with the largest market space.
At the same time, autonomous driving technology in China has also been supported by policy.
According to incomplete statistics, more than 50 cities in China have introduced autonomous driving pilot demonstration policies, including Shenzhen, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Hangzhou and other provinces and cities.
