“It’s a joke?” He was going to the airport to catch a plane and almost missed it because his driverless taxi left him stuck circling the parking lot.

Just as you can have bad experiences when riding in a taxi or an Uber, it is possible to have a bad time in a robotaxithat is, in a taxi without a driver.

Let them tell it to a user Waymo who almost missed his plane back home because the robotaxi that was taking him to the airport decided to circle around in a parking lot without stopping. Again.

It’s not the first time it’s happened, but Waymo says it’s fixed

All technologies have a maturation period before functioning without failures and the autonomous car is not an exception. For some time now, several companies have been testing this type of vehicles on public roads to develop them in the best possible way and try to get them to work perfectly as soon as possible.

On the one hand, there are car brands that test their autonomous vehicles on the street, such as Tesla, but there are also robotaxisthat is, autonomous taxis that provide the same service as a taxi, but without a driver.

The two largest robotaxis companies are Cruise and Waymo, or rather they were because General Motors (Cruise) has already dismantled its multi-billion dollar driverless taxi project. On the other hand, Waymo, which belongs to Alphabet (Google)keeps moving forward, although he still has a lot of work ahead of him.

And Waymo’s technology is still very green (actually, the autonomous car, in general) and some of the customers who use its robotaxis are seeing it first-hand.

It is the case of Mike Johns, an entrepreneur specialized in the technology sector who lives in Los Angeles, California (United States). A few days ago, Johns had to catch a plane in Arizona to return home and he almost missed it because of the robotaxi he took to go to the airport because it started circling a roundabout, without stopping.

Mike Johns posted his video on his profile LinkedIn and accompanied the publication with a message: “My Monday was fine until I got into one of Waymo’s “humanless” cars. I got in, buckled up (safety first) and the adventure began. This autonomous vehicle said ‘screw GPS’, the car just went around in circles, eight circles in total. Is this a joke or something? Is this car hacked? It looked like a scene from a science fiction movie. My experience with Waymo was crap. I was on my way to the airport and almost missed my flight. I will continue doing things the old way.”

According to the media Los Angeles Timeswhen he was circling inside the robotaxi, Johns contacted Waymo customer service, but there was no way to stop the car from continuing to drive aimlessly, until it finally got back on the right path.

Just a few weeks ago, another Waymo robotaxi, also one based on a Jaguar I-Pace, had the same problem. This bug was supposed to have been fixed. with a software updateas Waymo said at the time, and the truth is that Johns posted the video circling inside the robotaxi a month ago, so he could have had this bad experience before Waymo updated the software. Now everything should be resolved. It’s supposed to be part of the maturation process.