- A Waymo customer said his self-driving taxi drove him around in circles, almost making him late for his flight. A video shows Waymo’s customer service wasn’t able to do much to stop the vehicle, raising concerns about self-driving safety.
If you’ve ever worried about a robo-taxi going rogue, one Waymo customer has lived your worst nightmare.
Mike Johns, an artificial intelligence consultant from Inglewood, Calif., recounted in a LinkedIn post a disorienting experience riding in a Waymo, a self-driving cab, in a Hertz car parking lot to catch a ride to the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport airport. He posted a video showing the vehicle driving around in circles in a parking lot.
“Why is this happening to me on a Monday?” Johns said in the video. “Why is this thing going in a circle? I'm getting dizzy.”
After the first couple of circles, Johns thought he was being pranked.
“I'm thinking it's one of my friends doing some SNL skit,” Johns told Fortune. “I have a couple of friends like that. And lo and behold, that's not the case. It now turns from that scenario into: What the hell is going on? Am I in a movie?”
This wasn’t the first time Johns had ridden in a Waymo, he told Fortune. Johns had taken a Waymo for a “very short ride” one other time, but wanted to try it again “being that autonomous vehicles are the future, and that future starts now,” he said.
Then “all of a sudden” a Waymo customer support agent started speaking with Johns over the car speakers after the company was notified of the issue, but the agent could do little to stop the car from circling, saying it might be experiencing a “routing issue.”
“It's circling around a parking lot. I got my seat belt on. I can't get out of the car,” Johns said to the agent. “Has this been hacked? What's going on? I got a flight to catch.”
Johns said he felt as if the customer service agent was likely a “fake human” or AI-powered bot because they avoided answering specific questions pertaining to his ride. Since he was on the way to the airport, he asked whether Waymo would cover his flight if he missed it due to the debacle, and the customer service agent appeared to dodge his question.
“She doesn't really say anything, which made me feel like this was just prompted, scripted-type play,” Johns said. “If you ask something that's not in that queue [of preset questions and responses], it just doesn't know what to say.”
Johns wrote in his LinkedIn post the car circled eight times in total, causing him to nearly miss his flight. The video shows the customer service agent said they didn’t have the option to control the car, but were “trying to pull it over.” The agent also instructed Johns to use his app to solve the problem.
“That's where I get pissed, because I'm like, this problem is between you and the car, not my phone,” Johns said. It took about five to seven minutes to solve the problem, he said, which felt like longer than that because of how unexpected it was.
Waymo didn’t immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
“My Waymo experience sucked,” Johns wrote in his post. “I’ll keep it old fashion and just #Lyft or #Uber.”
Even as self-driving taxis continue to be a burgeoning technology, only 25% of Americans would prefer a robo-taxi to traditional rideshare, according to a study by JW Surety Bonds released Monday.
Johns also wrote in his post that Waymo had not followed up with him about the situation via email, text, or call. “Nope, customer service is automated and ran by AI,” he wrote.
Waymo, however, told CNN it attempted to contact Johns and left a voicemail for follow-up. Johns reiterated to Fortune that the only thing Waymo has done to remedy the situation is to refund him for his ride.
“I haven't had any communication with them,” Johns told Fortune. “And that sucks, because in this age of automation, everything digitized, there still needs to be the balance of the symbiotic relationship between human and robot.”
The future of self-driving taxis
The incident raises questions about Waymo’s safety. As of early December, however, Waymo was providing more than 150,000 weekly trips “without any history of catastrophic traffic accidents,” according to the Associated Press. As of September 2024, Waymo cars had driven 33 million rider-only miles without a human driver, according to its Safety Impact report released this week.
While Johns’ experience wasn’t an accident and didn’t appear to cause injuries, it was jarring and disorienting.
“This autonomous vehicle said to heck with GPS,” Johns wrote in his post. “It felt like a scene in a sci-fi thriller.”
Although Waymo hasn’t reported a history of accidents, the Mountain View, Calif. company, formerly Google’s self-driving car project, recalled 672 cars in June 2024 to make them less likely to drive into poles after a car struck one a month prior. Waymo issued other recalls, including in February 2024 when two of its cars hit the same truck just minutes apart. The company, along with fellow robo-taxi company Zoox, was the target of a federal investigation last spring for erratic and “unexpected” self-driving behavior.
Johns also notes the challenges in using developing technology.
“I participated in an experiment…I had to pay for,” Johns told Fortune. “Because what happens when you're in these type of vehicles, is every error that happens, they work to fix the bugs on your dime.”
Waymo, however, claims “data to date indicates the Waymo Driver is already reducing traffic injuries and fatalities in the places where we currently operate,” according to the company’s safety page. “At Waymo, we aim to reduce traffic injuries and fatalities by driving safely and responsibly, and will carefully manage risk as we scale our operations.”
Investors remain optimistic about self-driving’s future. In October 2024, Waymo raised $5.6 billion from investors, its largest funding round yet. Srikanth Thirumalai, Waymo’s head of engineering for onboard technology, previously told Fortune’s Sheryl Estrada the company is prioritizing safety in its messaging to build trust with potential customers.
“We don’t want to take the focus off of what we’re actually trying to do here,” Thirumalai said. “We have to lead with ‘hey, we are developing this technology responsibly.'”
