Driverless Waymo taxi ‘traps' passengers while stopped in traffic on one of Austin's ‘scariest roads': report
Way mo' than they bargained for.
Passengers using a popular driverless taxi app were trapped inside the fully autonomous vehicle as it parked in the middle of traffic on 'one of the scariest streets in Austin,' according to a report.
Waymo ride-hailers in the Texas city drove right into a 'Black Mirror' episode when their self-driving car stopped in a merging lane underneath the MoPac Expressway and locked them inside for several minutes as vehicles whizzed by, according to Chron.
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'We kept saying 'We're on a highway, please move the car,'' passenger Becky Navarro said in a video that's garnered over 500k views on TikTok.
3 TikToker Becky Navarro claimed her Waymo taxi glitched out during a ride — locking her while the car sat still on a busy roadway.
tiktok/@beckypearlatx
'Cars kept honking at us, and it would not move. It would not let us out,' Navarro said while walking with her fellow passenger on the side of the road with the dysfunctional car in the background.
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In a caption to the video, Navarro — who was let out of the car after about five minutes — claimed that the Waymo vehicle drove past their desired destination and towards Austin's downtown area.
Later in the video, the car apparently wakes up from its slumber and speeds right past its two former passengers, walking on the side of the road.
'For people who don't know — this is one of the scariest roads in Austin. Being parked on Mopac is a death trap. This is my fear,' one animated TikTok commenter wrote, Chron reported.
Navarro claimed that the car only unlocked its doors when the self-professed 'TikTok queen' threatened customer support with going live on the social media app — but Waymo, a subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet Inc., claimed the whole issue was a user error.
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3 After the two passengers exited the vehicle, the driverless car was seen jetting down the street.
tiktok/@beckypearlatx
'During their ride, the passengers in the video pressed the 'pull over' button and the vehicle pulled to the side of a 30 mph road with a sidewalk,' a rep for Waymo said in comment to Chron.
'The riders could have safely exited at any time and at no point did our Rider Support team remotely unlock the door for them,' Waymo added.
The company further said that passengers can pause their ride and exit the vehicle at any time, the local outlet reported.
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3 Waymo is a driverless taxi ride-hailing app that operates in four major cities in the United States.
Source: Waymo
Waymo, however, has had prior issues with allegedly locking passengers inside its driverless cars — which operate in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin.
Tech entrepreneur Mike Johns took a Waymo driverless taxi to the Scottsdale Airport in Arizona earlier this year when his escort glitched out and drove in circles instead of towards his destination.
'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 in a video posted to LinkedIn.
A company staffer was eventually able to get control of the vehicle remotely, allowing the LA native to catch his flight home.
The remote operation of Waymo vehicles has come in handy on other occasions — with LA cops shutting down a getaway driverless car that a thief hailed after robbing a grocery store.
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At the end of the return trip, it took a route that I would not have chosen to take. But human taxi drivers do that too. It also took me to a Starbucks about 8 miles away intervention-free. That trip too was very similar, if not exactly the same as, what I've experienced in a Waymo Jaguar I-PACE in downtown Los Angeles. The only thing that I've found annoying is occasional speed limitations. On some short stretches of road near my home it slows to 25 mph and won't go faster unless I intervene. Tesla FSD is often compared unfavorably to Google's Waymo. That may have been true in the past. But not anymore. I use Waymo a lot in Los Angeles, as I said above. Though Waymo is amazing, it also makes mistakes. But its biggest shortcoming is its range limitations, i.e., geofencing (see this map). Los Angeles is a very big place and most of LA county is off limits to Waymo. Tesla's FSD doesn't have that problem. 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And I've been in a Tesla when FSD missed seeing a community gate, which, without intervention, would have resulted in an accident. That was in a previous version of FSD. But it doesn't mean it can't happen again. That said, GM's SuperCruise, based on my experience, also makes the rare risky mistake. As do other ADAS (Advanced Driver Assist System) from other EV manufacturers that I've tested. Over the past year, I've tested ADAS on EVs from General Motors (Super Cruise), Rivian (Highway Assist), Ford (Bluecruise), and Tesla. My take is that the benefits of an ADAS outweigh the risks. In 2024, there were 39,345 US traffic fatalities. Needless to say, practically all involved human drivers. And that increasingly means distracted drivers using their smart device. Unlike humans, an ADAS does not get distracted. The larger picture is that, on balance, a Tesla with FSD – and any reputable ADAS for that matter – makes the roads safer. As long as the driver is paying attention and can take over when the ADAS fails. The latter unfortunately is a big if because some drivers see it as an invitation to text or nap. So, what about a robotaxi where there is no driver to intervene? As stated above, of course there's risk. But there is a much bigger risk with the average car driven by the average distracted human. With the explosion of personal devices, more and more people are distracted while they drive as they engage in things like texting – and even web browsing – while driving. I see people staring down at their devices while driving every day in Los Angeles. Those people are much more dangerous than any ADAS-controlled car. And those people would benefit greatly from an ADAS. The upshot is, an ADAS, such as Tesla FSD and robotaxi, does not get distracted and is laser-focused on the road. Humans often are not.
