Mike Johns, a tech entrepreneur from Los Angeles, was involved in a bizarre event involving a self-driving taxi. Johns opted to take a Waymo self-driving taxi to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport last month.
In a LinkedIn post, Johns described the experience, stating, “My Monday was fine till i got into one of Waymo ‘s “humanless” cars. I get in, buckle up ( safety first) and the saga begins. The saga begins.”
“This autonomous vehicle said to heck with GPS. The car just went around in circles, eight circles at that,” he added.
In a video accompanying the post, Johns is seen sitting in the back seat of the self-driving car, becoming more and more frustrated as the vehicle makes numerous loops around a parking lot. He complained, “Why is this happening to me on a Monday?”
Johns contacted the “Waymo support” line later in the video, and an employee tried to diagnose the car’s problem while it kept driving in circles.
He explained, “I got a flight to catch. Why is this thing going in a circle—I’m getting dizzy. Has this been hacked? What’s going on? I feel like I’m in the movies.”
The support team member apologizes and admits that she cannot remotely “control the car,” instead asking John to press a button within the Waymo app on his end. Two screens in the car then said it was “temporarily pausing” the ride and “finding a spot” to pull over.
Johns said in his post that he “nearly missed” his flight because of the debacle, though the company said that the incident only caused him a five-minute delay, per CNN.
Although the video doesn’t make it clear how the problem was resolved, Johns was ultimately driven to the airport by the taxi where he made his flight. The company later informed NBC News that Johns was not billed for his journey.
According to Waymo, a routine software update has fixed the problem that caused his car to drive in circles.
This is not the first time a Waymo taxi has confused passengers and bystanders. CNN reported that in June 2024, Waymo recalled 672 cars to make them less likely to drive into poles after a car hit a pole in May.
The company has however said in the past that its taxis are made to increase road safety and have had 78% fewer crashes that caused an injury compared to human-driven cars.
