Last week, a Los Angeles man nearly missed his flight home after his Waymo self-driving taxi failed to stop and drove him in circles in a parking lot. Mike Johns was returning home from Scottsdale, Arizona, when he jumped into a Waymo taxi and headed to the nearby airport. What happened next felt like a trip to Disneyland.
"Why is this thing spinning? I'm starting to get dizzy," Johns said in a video posted on social media. He was trapped inside the car as it spun around the parking lot. Not only was he unable to get the car to stop, but he was on the phone with customer service as the car continued to spin. "It circles the parking lot. I'm wearing a seat belt and can't get out of the car. Has the car been hacked? What's going on?"
After several minutes, Waymo representatives finally took control of the car and got him to the airport in time to catch his flight back to Los Angeles.
He said a lack of empathy from representatives who tried to help him and that he wasn't sure whether he was talking to a human or artificial intelligence were among his biggest concerns.
"Where is the empathy? Where is the connection between people?" Johns said in an interview with CBS News Los Angeles. "This is also a case of today's digital world. A half-baked product with no one in the middle to meet the needs of customers, consumers."
Ironically, Johns, who works in the tech industry himself, said he would love to see services like Waymo succeed, but he no longer plans to get in the car until he's sure the issues are resolved.
In the meantime, he's still waiting for someone from Waymo to contact him about his concerns, and even though his video has attracted a lot of attention since last week, it still hasn't appeared.
"Driverless, right?" he said. "This is the ghost in the shell, right?"
When asked to comment for this story, Waymo provided further information about the ride. They said the delay occurred in mid-December and lasted just over five minutes as a car took Johns to the airport. They said he was not charged for travel and the "loop" issue was resolved with a software update.
Just a few days ago, Waymo broke the news in Los Angeles when someone attempted to hijack one of their self-driving all-electric Jaguars downtown.