Malfunctioning robotaxi traps passenger in car on way to airport in footage straight out of 'a sci-fi thriller'
A tech entrepreneur became trapped after his self-driving taxi started spinning in circles.
Mike Johns was heading to the airport in a self-operating 'Waymo' taxi from Scottsdale, Arizona, but his autonomous vehicle had other plans.
The car began looping endlessly in a parking lot, forcing Johns to make a panicked call for help, according to a CBS News report.
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“I got a flight to catch. Why is this thing going in a circle? I’m getting dizzy,” Johns exclaimed to a Waymo customer service rep as shown in a video he shared on LinkedIn.
From the backseat of the spinning vehicle, Johns asked: “It’s circling around a parking lot. I got my seat belt on. I can’t get out of the car. Has this been hacked? What’s going on? I feel like I’m in the movies. Is somebody playing a joke on me?”
The representative instructed the LA entrepreneur to open his Waymo app so she could remotely stop the car.
However, it was a struggle to get the car under control as seen in the video.
After a few minutes of back-and-forth, the rep finally got the vehicle under control, and Johns was able to make it to his flight just in time.
In a post following the incident, Johns explained that the vehicle made 'eight circles' in the parking lot.
“It felt like a scene in a sci-fi thriller,” he wrote.
Despite the malfunction, it seems Waymo is yet to follow up with Johns about the event.
“You’d think by now Waymo would email, text, or call for a follow-up. Nope, customer service is automated and ran by AI,” Johns wrote on LinkedIn.
Saying that, a Waymo rep reportedly told CBS News that they’ve tried to reach out to Johns since the mishap, which occurred in mid-December.
Johns was delayed for 5 minutes before successfully driving him to his flight and was not charged for the trip, as per the rep.
Waymo was originally part of Google’s Self-Driving Car Project in 2009 and operates in Metro Phoenix, the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles.
Now, the company produces fully autonomous self-driving vehicles that use sensors and software to navigate, according to their website.
And although he works in AI development himself, Johns said he’s not eager to step into another self-driving car anytime soon.
“Where’s the empathy? Where’s the human connection to this?” Johns told CBS. “It’s just, again, a case of today’s digital world. A half-baked product and nobody meeting the customer, the consumers, in the middle."