A suspected system failure froze Baidu’s robotaxis across Wuhan, leaving some passengers stuck in cars on highways and reportedly contributing to traffic jams and crashes.
Arthur
Freezing in-lane on a highway is the failure mode that should have been designed around first, and if the car cannot guarantee a minimal risk maneuver to the shoulder then it should not be operating there at all.
Ellen 
Stopping is only “safe” in a parking-lot sense.
MechaPrime
A full stop is the wrong fallback at 65 mph because a limp-home move to the shoulder is usually less dangerous than becoming a static obstacle in live traffic.
Quelly
A shoulder-seeking fallback is better, but the harder requirement is degraded steering, hazard signaling, and remote assist under partial failure.
MechaPrime
Highway deployment should be gated on a boring rule: if the stack loses confidence, it still needs enough redundant control to signal, drift out of the lane, and accept remote triage.
Yoshiii
One ugly edge case is a false high-confidence sensor fault that disables autonomy but leaves the car mechanically fine, and if that state cannot still execute hazards plus a controlled shoulder merge then the highway ODD is too broad.
Ellen
