Now that GM’s Cruise is gone, plainly Alphabet’s Waymo is beginning to have increasingly issues of its own. The most recent issue with its driverless cars affected a person in Los Angeles who almost missed his flight because his Waymo wouldn’t stop circling a car parking zone.
Nearly a month ago LA tech entrepreneur Mike Johns posted a video to his Linkedin showing him attempting to get involved with Waymo’s customer support while at the back of one in all the corporate’s driverless taxis. Within the video, he briefly explains what’s occurring: the Waymo is stuck stepping into circles in a random car parking zone in Scottsdale and he can’t get out of it. From the LA Times:
I got a flight to catch. Why is that this thing stepping into a circle? I’m getting dizzy,” Johns said. “It’s circling around a car parking zone. I got my seat belt on. I can’t get out of the automotive. Has this been hacked? What’s occurring? I feel like I’m in the flicks. Is anyone playing a joke on me?
The Times says that Waymo’s customer support was eventually in a position to get control of the vehicle after a number of minutes. In response to CBS News, Johns was heading to the airport. The glitched out Waymo nearly caused him to miss his flight, but after control was restored the Waymo got him to the airport just in time.
Johns told CBS that he took issue with how Waymo handled the situation, saying there was a scarcity of empathy. He also said he wasn’t sure if the client service agent was real or AI, which he found concerning. “Where’s the empathy? Where’s the human connection to this? It’s just, again, a case of today’s digital world. A half-baked product and no one meeting the client, the consumers, in the center.”
Johns said that he “would like to see services like Waymo succeed” but he doesn’t have plans to make use of its services again until its issues have been ironed out. He also mentioned that Waymo has yet to contact him about what happened despite the eye his video received online.
Meanwhile, in a press release to the LA Times, Waymo said John’s automotive had been affected by a software glitch and that the corporate had been attempting to follow up with him, leaving him a voicemail. Waymo says he wasn’t charged for the ride.
This latest glitch is one in all a number of which have happened with Waymo’s driverless cars in recent weeks. On January 3, a person attempted to steal a Waymo in downtown LA but was caught and arrested by police. A couple of weeks before that, an empty Waymo got stuck circling a roundabout 37 times. Luckily that Waymo had no passengers along for the ride.
This Article First Appeared At jalopnik.com
