A peculiar incident occurred in Arizona, USA, when Mike Johns got stuck in a Waymo self-driving taxi while trying to get to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. The vehicle had technical problems and drove in circles in a parking lot at least eight times.
Mike reported the case on the social network LinkedIn, where he shared a video of what happened. “My Monday was going well until I got into one of Waymo’s ‘human-free’ cars. The vehicle decided to ignore the GPS and drove in circles eight times,” he wrote.
Initially, Mike thought it might be a joke or even a case of hacking, describing the episode as something worthy of a science fiction film. “I almost missed my flight and, after that, I prefer to use Lyft or Uber”, he commented, also criticizing Waymo’s automated customer service service for its lack of empathy.
In the video, you can see him communicating with a company representative, who tried to resolve the problem remotely after identifying the fault in the vehicle. Despite the setback, Mike, who works as an Artificial Intelligence consultant, admitted that the choice for the autonomous taxi was related to his work in the area and stated that he is considering giving the service another chance in the future.
Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, explained to CNN that it tried to contact the customer via email and voicemail after the incident.
