"Call an ambulance, quick!" A passenger's three fingers recently got caught in the door gap of a Pony.ai driverless vehicle operating in Shenzhen. The man stomped his feet in pain as his trapped fingers turned pale and lost color. He shouted for passersby to help call for assistance, and someone at the scene also yelled "call an ambulance fast." Fortunately, the man was not seriously hurt. Pony.ai later responded that the incident was caused by a companion manually closing the door, adding that "no such accident has ever occurred before." A person familiar with the matter told the outlet that the man's fingers were actually caught in the gap between the left front door and the left rear door, at a joint section. But the incident also sparked concerns among netizens about safety hazards in driverless vehicles during basic riding scenarios. "What if this happened in a remote place with no passersby and no driver?"

In response, the outlet called three leading Robotaxi companies as a consumer, including Pony.ai, WeRide, and Baidu's Apollo Go, and found that although their safety designs for riding scenarios differ, the main way to handle safety problems is mostly to call a customer service hotline or press an in-vehicle safety button and wait for dedicated staff to respond.

What to do when a driverless car has an accident? Three companies respond

During the National Day holiday, a video spread on social platforms: a Pony.ai driverless car was parked on the roadside in Shenzhen, and a man's three fingers on his left hand were trapped, already pale and bloodless. After repeatedly trying and failing to pull his hand free, the man called on passersby to help make a phone call. Pony.ai later responded that the passenger's fingers were accidentally caught when a companion manually closed the door as he got in, and that no serious injury was found after examination. After reviewing the complete video, traffic police also determined it was an accidental incident, not a traffic accident. A person familiar with the matter told the outlet that the man's fingers were actually caught in the gap between the left front door and the left rear door, at a joint section. "Normally, the front door of this kind of driverless car cannot be opened." According to the description, the passenger first opened the left rear door to let family members get in, then placed his hand at the angled position after the left rear door opened. The family member did not notice when closing the door, causing the fingers to be caught. "From the shooting angle it looked like the left front door caught him, but it was actually the gap in the middle."

According to the outlet, the vehicle involved was a mass-produced model from a certain brand and did not appear to have custom modifications in its door design. A review of public complaint platforms found that door problems with this model are not isolated. On an automobile complaint platform, a car owner recently complained that the "right rear door suddenly could not be opened." Another quality evaluation data set showed that among multiple faults of this mass-produced model, front door handle or lock failures and rear doors being difficult to close were both included. In Weibo Smart Search statistics, nearly 60% of netizens were controversial about the incident. "After the door is closed, it cannot be opened from inside or outside, and there is no mechanical unlock outside the car, so there are still certain safety hazards." Some netizens also questioned hidden door handles, arguing that they are inconvenient to operate in emergencies. Industry analyst Zhang Shule also believed that the incident itself was indeed an accident, and any vehicle could catch a person, but after a driverless vehicle catches someone, it cannot unlock because there is no human control, which precisely exposes a safety loophole.

In response, the outlet called three leading driverless taxi companies as a consumer, including Pony.ai, Apollo Go, and WeRide, and received corresponding answers. WeRide's customer service clearly stated that the vehicle is equipped with a certain anti-pinch function. "If the vehicle detects that it is not closed properly, or that an obstacle is caught, it will reopen and close again." The customer service representative introduced that WeRide's doors are automatic sliding doors, with 30 seconds for getting on and off after opening. "If you feel the door opening time for getting off is relatively short, there is a delayed door opening button on the in-car tablet, and you can click it to delay." Pony.ai's customer service said that different models have different door-opening methods. "The four-seat model operating in Beijing requires manual door opening, while the five-seat business model has electric doors and requires pressing a button on the door." Apollo Go's customer service did not respond to this, only saying that if problems occur while driving, you can "contact us at any time." "Just as hidden door handles previously had a similar problem of being unable to open after a collision or power loss, which once formed public opinion. As long as problems can be discovered and loopholes solved immediately, or even actively blocked by the whole industry, that would be excellent." Zhang Shule said, "There must never again be a situation like hidden handles, which were criticized for a long time before finally being resolved through mandatory national standards."

After there is no driver, who saves people?

According to the outlet, although the three leading platforms each have different safety devices, their main emergency plans are all to contact the back office by phone or in-car tablet button, and then wait for the back office to handle and resolve the problem. But the problem is that in many traffic safety issues, time is exactly what cannot be waited for. In recent years, with the spread of driverless vehicles, safety problems arising from them have also increased. Like this finger-pinching incident, in March this year, a passenger in Wuhan had their clothes caught in the door while getting off an Apollo Go vehicle. After the vehicle started, the person nearly was dragged, the emergency phone did not connect to a human for 3 minutes, and customer service only proposed 35 yuan in compensation. In addition to incidents of doors trapping people, safety problems during vehicle travel have also occurred one after another. A review of public reports by the outlet found that in August 2025, a Robotaxi in Yongchuan, Chongqing drove straight into a municipal construction trench, with most of the body sinking into a 3-meter-deep pit; at the end of 2025, a Hello Robotaxi in Zhuzhou hit two pedestrians, and one person was trapped under the vehicle. The common point of these incidents is that when an accident occurs, no one inside the vehicle can react immediately. Lu Kelin, an internationally registered innovation management expert and founder and CEO of Luke Island Technology, told the outlet that the core problem of this incident is that Robotaxi has created a "single-channel dependency." "When a companion outside the vehicle mistakenly closes the door and causes fingers to be caught, the victim cannot open the door from the outside, and people inside the vehicle cannot assist in escape, forming a de facto 'locked state.'" Lu Kelin said.

The outlet learned that Robotaxis generally adopt a "front-row locked" design — the driver's door and front passenger door cannot be opened from the inside, passengers can only sit in the rear row, and there is a transparent partition between the front and rear rows. That is, once the rear door fails, it is difficult for passengers to have another escape channel. More notably, Lu Kelin pointed out that in this incident, the system could even detect whether passengers fastened their seat belts (it would not move if not fastened), but could not detect that a finger was caught in the door. "This shows that there is a structural blind spot in the priority setting of safety perception," Lu Kelin said.

Heavy spending on R&D, but safety still has not caught up?

On one side, safety problems occur frequently; on the other side, the Robotaxi industry is still burning large amounts of money in exchange for expansion. Financial report data show that Pony.ai's total revenue in the first half of 2026 was US$70.47 million, but its net loss was still as high as US$98.86 million. Among that, R&D expenses reached US$104 million, and R&D expenses already exceeded total revenue. WeRide is also burning money heavily. In the first half of 2026, total revenue was 346 million yuan, net loss was as high as 790 million yuan, and R&D expenses were about 790 million yuan — R&D investment was almost equal to all revenue. Specifically, the money is mainly spent on autonomous driving technology research and development, mass production of seventh-generation models, and overseas market expansion. But at present, the pace of expansion has intensified: Pony.ai plans to expand its fleet to more than 3,000 vehicles by the end of 2026. WeRide's operating vehicles have already exceeded 1,800 and have landed in Spain, Denmark, and other European countries. But while expanding, although money has been poured into technology, safety problems have not yet been fully guaranteed. Lu Kelin believes that the larger the fleet, the more frequently edge scenarios are exposed. This finger-pinching incident is a signal. "When the fleet expands from a few hundred vehicles to several thousand, all kinds of unexpected scenarios will appear." However, he also pointed out that the good news is that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the mandatory national standard "Safety Requirements for Autonomous Driving Systems of Intelligent Connected Vehicles" in July 2026, but the standard will only be implemented in July 2027. "This 'window period' is exactly the stage in which the industry must increase pressure on itself," Lu Kelin said. From the answers of the three customer service teams, the industry's safety design standards are obviously not yet unified. As Zhang Shule said, the current level of automobile intelligence cannot yet achieve a truly "driverless" effect. "Whether using intelligent driving or remote control, at this stage, under current law, humans remain the responsible subject."