Guy Gets Trapped In Self-Driving Car That Keeps Going In Circles

I've come to terms with the fact that driverless cars are very much on the horizon. To a degree, I like the idea. I mean, being able to kick it in the back seat and read a book while a bunch of sensors and accelerometers with just a dash of tech-sorcery. I understand getting me from A to B sounds kind of nice (plus, no small talk), but it doesn't seem like it would take a major malfunction for this entire system to go haywire.

Well, it appears that may be what happened to one guy whose leisurely trip in a driverless Waymo car, turned into him getting tapped in the backseat while the car with a mind of its own decided it was donut time.

According to Fox Business, back on December 5, Mike Johns hopped in a Waymo in Scottsdale, Arizona. He planned to take the car to the airport and then back to Los Angeles where he lives, but the car had other plans.

Johns started taking video as the car just kept driving in circles and eventually the voice of a support person came over the intercom, saying she had received a notification that the car may be "experiencing some routing issues," which could be the understatement of the year, and we're a week into January.

He told the tech support woman that he was getting dizzy.

"Has this been hacked? What's going on?" he asked. "I feel like I'm in the movies. Is somebody playing a joke on me?"

Mike seemed pretty unhappy, and can you blame him? I'd be pretty upset too if I was in a rush to catch a flight and my robo-car decided that it was just going to start going in circles with me in the back, helpless and prone to car-sickness.

Fortunately, the ordeal only made Johns about five minutes late, but the bad news for Waymo is that it might make some people a bit gun-shy about letting a driverless car give them a lift to the airport.