Have you seen them? Self-driving taxis. They always seem so odd to me. The steering wheel turning, the car rolling, all without anyone in the driver’s seat.

Self-driving taxis aren’t everywhere just yet. Currently, Waymo offers self-driving taxi services in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Zoox is another startup hoping to offer rides in several cities including San Francisco and Las Vegas. Cruise was operating in a number of cities with supervised autonomous driving, but has suspended operations for fully autonomous vehicles.

Self-driving taxis have been trained to drive using artificial intelligence (AI) and many onboard cameras. The idea is that they would drive in a manner similar to humans. Except, they’re computers and they don’t quite “think” the way we do. Nor, do they fail quite like we do.

The Wild Ride

A few weeks ago, Mike Johns decided to get a ride to the airport using Waymo, but the ride ended up taking him for a loop. Several actually. The self-driving taxi ended up circling a parking lot. Mike filmed himself while talking to Waymo support. They asked him to open his app! He asked why they needed him to use his phone and they said they didn’t have a way to directly stop the car? Whaaat???!!!

Eventually, they were able to stop the ride and allow him to get on his way to the airport. And, thank goodness, he didn’t miss his flight.

Other Wild Ride Stories

Mike is not the only person who has had an undesirable ride with a self-driving taxi.

Check out a few other stories where self-driving taxi has created some. Note: I think most of the stories were focused on Waymo, because Zoox doesn’t seem to be fully operational yet and Cruise has pulled back its fully autonomous mode due to some incidents involving pedestrians.

1. A woman was trapped in a self driving due to catcallers blocking her self-driving taxi.

2. A reporter with the San Francisco ABC affiliate tried out a self-driving taxi.

3. A self-driving taxi blocked Vice President Harris’ motorcade.

While I personally have not been in a self-driving taxi, I know a few people who have had successful, uneventful rides in self-driving taxis, so I certainly don’t want to make the above incidents seem like the norm. But if you are planning to try out self-driving taxi and something goes wrong, don’t panic. And be sure to contact support. And be ready to pull out your phone.