LA Man Says He Almost Missed His Flight After Waymo Drove Him in Circles

A Los Angeles man who was trying to get to an Arizona airport in one of Waymo’s driverless taxis last month got stuck in an incredibly frustrating loop where the car just traveled in circles. The man even said he almost missed his flight back home. And while Waymo tells Gizmodo that the problem has been fixed, it’s still not clear what went wrong.

Mike Johns, a tech entrepreneur in LA, writes about his experience LinkedInEven with a video of the ordeal. The video has gone viral on social media platforms.

“I was having a good Monday until I got into one of Waymo’s ‘unmanned’ cars. “I get in, buckle up (safety first) and the story begins,” John wrote.This autonomous vehicle said to hack with GPS, the car just went in circles, eight circles.

Johns, who did not immediately respond to a message sent through his website, said he wondered if someone was pranking him.

“Is someone kidding, is this car hacked? it is [felt] Like a scene from a sci-fi thriller. My Waymo experience sucks. Remember I was on my way to the airport and almost missed my flight. I’ll keep it old fashioned and just Lyft or Uber,” Johns continued.

Waymo, which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, told Gizmodo that Ryder was not charged for his trip and that Johns has tried to contact it but they have yet to connect. Wemo insists that the detour lasted about five minutes. Johns said ABC15 Arizona That he was frustrated by the experience and “it’s like people test.”

John also said CBS News Los Angeles He didn’t like the attitude of the tech support person (or robot) he encountered, and wasn’t sure if he was talking to a human or an AI while circling.

“Where is the sympathy? Where’s the human connection to that?” Johns told CBS News. “It’s, again, a case of today’s digital world. A half-baked product and nobody meets the customer, the consumer, in the middle.”

This isn’t the first time Waymo cars have gotten very confused and seemingly stuck in loops In December, auto news outlet Jalopnik reported on a Waymo car that got stuck in an Arizona roundabout, at least circling. 37 times. There were no passengers in the vehicle at that time.

There have been more disturbing incidents with driverless cars, like the Waymo hit a cyclist in San Francisco February 2024. There was also the time in May 2024 when a Waymo car hit a telephone poleRequests the withdrawal of the company’s mapping technology.

Johns compared his experience to a science fiction movie, which is not uncommon when people experience strange things with new technology. And it’s hard to tell what went wrong from the passenger’s perspective. When I took a Waymo in Los Angeles a few months ago, the car left just as I was about to get in. The car decided it should pull me into a turn lane instead, a much more dangerous decision that a human driver probably wouldn’t have made.

But it’s definitely the future, if only for driverless companies like Waymo to undercut the prices of services like Uber and Lyft. At least until they put human drivers out of business entirely. At this point, they can raise prices just as they did after Uber destroyed the taxi industry. Time is marching on.