Mike Johns boarded a driverless Waymo taxi to an airport in Scottsdale, Arizona, but it began spinning in circles in a parking lot.
He filmed the moment he was trapped in the vehicle, unable to stop the car or get help.
Johns said he almost missed his flight.
“Spins in circles” makes it sound like the car was drifting, when it was just doing laps around the inside of a parking lot. Also, this guy starts talking about them “taking care” of his flight when this has been happening for what, 5 minutes? I get that it’s annoying, but if 5 minutes circling a parking lot would have made him miss his flight, he’d also have missed it if there was even a hint of bad traffic. He also doesn’t even allow the customer service person to help him.
Also, the screen in the car has a “pull over” button on it. I guess he missed that? Or, maybe he hit it and it was stuck in a loop trying to find a safe place to pull over? It seems to me that a software button on a touch screen isn’t good enough though. They should have a physical big red button that a passenger can’t miss and can hit if something is going wrong. But, that’s just me.
To be fair, he couldn’t have used the app since he was recording the incident for social media clout. So much more important.
I was wondering where to sign up when I thought the car was doing donuts
Did he try opening the door? I haven’t watched it, but whenever I open the door in a waymo, it immediately stops
I don’t know, I doubt it.
I’m an Uber driver. This is what I always tells my customers: if you don’t like the way I’m driving just literally open the car door while we’re in motion and I’ll end the ride immediately.
It’s a really good system. Makes a lot of sense.
😂 I don’t understand your point. He was in a parking lot and could have safely exited at any time if he felt unsafe. Using waymo is a choice, and being a new technology, it has a few bugs that, as far as I can tell, have never been life threatening. Before I got a car, about a month ago, I was using Uber for years and Waymo (when it became available) whenever it was too hot for my dog to walk to work. I have only had ONE Uber driver who gave me the impression that they were a safer driver than Waymo. In my own anecdotal experience Waymo is SIGNIFICANTLY safer than human drivers
Edit: two commas
How did he not allow them to help? They should be able to remotely take over the car. He’s correct that they don’t need his phone to correct an issue like this.
He also didn’t know how long this could take. Good to have it on a recording in case he was stuck there for an hour and did miss his flight.
He kept talking over the woman who was trying to help. He brought up his flight about 3x. When she asked him to bring up the Waymo app he pushed back rather than just doing what she asked.
He’s right that it’s dumb if he has to use his phone to do something. But, if she thought that would work, why not try it? I suspect the reason he didn’t want to do that is that he was using his phone to record his social media post, and was more concerned with getting his viral post ready vs. trying to actually resolve the situation.
This doesn’t make Waymo look good. Their car getting stuck looping a parking lot is ridiculous. The passenger not having an obvious button to push to get the car to immediately stop (or find a safe place to pull over and stop if it’s on a highway or something) seems like a big oversight too. The person answering the phone also didn’t seem to know how to handle the situation either. Like, this seems like one of the primary things someone on support should know how to do: stop the car and let the passenger get out if there’s a problem. But, she seemed to be fumbling to find a solution.
Having said that, the guy seemed to be making the situation worse instead of trying to resolve it and get to the airport.
Please stop bending over backwards for the corporations. The customer shouldn’t have to control the taxi when they’re calling for emergency support like this. Should he just crawl into the front seat and drive the thing for them as well?
He was on his way to a flight. Flights are expensive. Of course he wants reassurance that his costs will be covered if he misses it due to their failings. He has no idea for how long he’s going to be continually going in circles and we don’t know for how long he’d already been going in circles.
This is a customer in distress and you’re shitting on them because they had a stressed tone towards the mega-corp representative? Shameful.
This take is so frustrating. It’s either black or white. Can’t give a small critique without being labeled as a corpo shill. There was equal criticism both ways. Was this the customers fault? No. But could it have been resolved easier/faster if he cooperated? Possibly. It’s a valid criticism and it doesn’t in any way mean that anyone is spreading their cheeks for corporations. Nobody was getting shat on.
Who’s bending over backwards?
I agree. The car also shouldn’t drive in circles around a parking lot, but here we are. In that situation, you do whatever works. If the fastest or easiest way to resolve the problem is to do something with the app on their phone, then so be it. It does no good to complain about what the solution should be when you’re trying to resolve that. Save that for later once the problem has been resolved.
Yes, and again, that’s something to address after you fix the problem. Stop interrupting the person who’s trying to help you to ask about compensation for a flight you haven’t yet missed (and probably won’t miss) rather than just do what they say to resolve the problem.
But, it’s going to be a lot longer if he keeps interrupting and bringing up the cost of his flight rather than just doing as the person trying to help him asks.
No, this is a guy trying to make a viral social media post, who obviously cares more about an exciting story than trying to fix the situation. If he cared about fixing it, when the agent asked him to bring up the waymo app on his phone he’d have done it. Instead, he needed to keep his phone in hand so he could keep recording for social media.
Waymo comes out of this looking incompetent, as they should. But, this guy didn’t do anything to make the situation better.