A tech entrepreneur spoke out after allegedly being trapped in a circling, self-driving car.
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In a LinkedIn post, Mike Johns revealed that he was heading to the airport in a self-driving “Waymo” car on his way home from Scottsdale, Arizona, when the vehicle went rogue and started driving in circles. He panicked and called for help.
“I got a flight to catch,” he explained to a Waymo customer service representative. “Why is this thing going in a circle? I’m getting dizzy.”
Johns also revealed that the self-driving car was circling a parking lot.
“I got my seat belt on,” he continued to share with the representative. “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 man to open the Waymo mobile app so she could remotely pull the vehicle over. Unfortunately, she appeared to struggle with immediately taking control of the car.
Eventually, the representative was able to get control of the car. Johns had enough time to catch his flight home to Los Angeles.
The Tech Entrepreneur Shares More Details About His Unfortunate Experience With the Self-Driving Car
In his LinkedIn post, Johns shared more details about the self-driving car experience.
“This autonomous vehicle said to heck with GPS, the car just went around in circles, eight circles at that,” he explained. “ It felt like a scene in a sci-fi thriller. My Waymo experience sucked. Mind you, I was on my way to the airport and nearly missed my flight.”
Johns also called out Waymo, stating he had not heard from the company since the incident.
“You’d think by now Waymo would email, text or call for a follow-up,” he then pointed out. “Nope, customer service is automated and ran by AI.”
Johns further spoke to CBS News about what happened and how the company has handled the situation.
“Where’s the empathy? Where’s the human connection to this?” he asked. “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.”
However, a representative for Waymo spoke to CBS News about the incident, stating it occurred in mid-December. The representative explained that the vehicle’ delayed Johns for 5 minutes before successfully driving him to his flight. Johns was also not charged for the trip.