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A Los Angeles tech entrepreneur found himself trapped in a self-driving taxi that started driving in circles, nearly causing him to miss his flight.
The incident, involving a
Waymo
vehicle, occurred last month in Scottsdale, Arizona, as
Mike Johns
was on his way to the airport, CBS News reported.
In a video shared on LinkedIn, Johns described the ordeal. “I got a flight to catch. Why is this thing going in a circle? I’m getting dizzy,” he said during a panicked call to a Waymo customer service representative from the backseat.
According to his LinkedIn post, the car made “eight circles” before stopping. “It felt like a scene in a sci-fi thriller,” Johns wrote.
The self-driving vehicle reportedly began circling a parking lot as Johns sought answers. “I got my seat belt on. I can’t get out of the car. Has this been hacked? What’s going on? I feel like I’m in the movies. Is somebody playing a joke on me?” he asked the representative.
Waymo’s customer service team eventually resolved the issue by remotely taking control of the vehicle, allowing Johns to reach his flight with minutes to spare.
Despite the company waiving the trip’s cost, Johns expressed disappointment at the lack of follow-up on his LinkedIn. “You’d think by now Waymo would email, text, or call for a follow-up. Nope, customer service is automated and ran by AI,” he said.
Waymo told CBS the incident caused only a five-minute delay, and they had attempted to contact Johns since.
Johns, who works in AI, hopes
autonomous vehicle technology
will succeed but remains hesitant to use self-driving taxis again. “Where’s the empathy? Where’s the human connection to this?” he told CBS News. Johns further wrote on LinkedIn that he is now unlikely to rely on a "humanless" self-driving car in the future. Instead, he plans to "keep it old-fashioned" and opt for services like Lyft or Uber.
Waymo, originally part of Google’s Self-Driving Car Project, operates in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
