A Los Angeles tech entrepreneur became trapped in an unhinged self-driving vehicle so long that he nearly missed his flight, according to a report.
Mike Johns was heading to the airport in a self-operating “Waymo” taxi on his way home from Scottsdale, Ariz., last month when the rogue vehicle began driving in circles, causing him to make a panicked call for help, according to a CBS report.
“I got a flight to catch. Why is this thing going in a circle? I’m getting dizzy,” Johns said to a Waymo customer-service representative from the backseat of the spinning vehicle, according to a video the unlucky traveler posted on Linkedin.
“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?” he asked the rep.
The representative told Johns to open his Waymo app so she could remotely pull the car over but appeared to struggle with immediately getting it under control, according to the video.
The rep was eventually able to get control of the vehicle after a few minutes, with just enough time for Johns to get on his flight home to LA, according to CBS.
The vehicle made “eight circles,” according to Johns’ LinkedIn post. “It felt like a scene in a sci-fi thriller.”
Johns said Waymo has not followed up with him after the incident.
“You’d think by now Waymo would email, text, or call for a follow-up. Nope, customer service is automated and ran by AI,” he wrote on Linkedin.
A representative for Waymo told CBS that the mishap occurred in mid-December and delayed Johns for 5 minutes before successfully driving him to his flight. Johns was not charged for the trip, according to the representative.
Waymo said it has attempted to reach Johns, according to the outlet.
The company produces fully autonomous self-driving vehicles that use sensors and software to navigate, according to their website. Waymo started as part of the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009 and operates in Metro Phoenix, the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles.
Johns, who ironically works in AI initiatives according to his LinkedIn profile, says he hopes companies such as Waymo will succeed, but has no plans of hopping in another self-driving vehicle any time soon.
“Where’s the empathy? Where’s the human connection to this?” Johns told CBS News.
“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,” he said.
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