A ride in a driverless Waymo taxi quickly turned into a nightmare for two passengers in Austin, Texas, after the autonomous vehicle reportedly stopped in a busy merging lane and refused to let them out.
Becky Levin Navarro and a friend were travelling to Deep Eddy Cabaret when the Waymo car unexpectedly passed their destination and came to a halt under the MoPac Expressway—an area known for its fast traffic and described by some as a “death trap.” In a now-viral TikTok video, Navarro said, “We kept saying, ‘We’re on a highway, please move the car.’ Cars kept honking at us, and it would not move. It would not let us out.”
Navarro claimed that the vehicle’s doors only unlocked after she told Waymo customer support she would go live on TikTok to expose the situation.
Waymo, which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc., disputed the account. A spokesperson said that the passengers had pressed the “pull over” button, causing the vehicle to stop safely on a 30 mph road with a sidewalk. They emphasised that “the riders could have safely exited at any time,” and denied that support staff had to remotely unlock the doors.
Despite Waymo’s clarification, the video has reignited public fears about driverless technology and how these vehicles perform in complex urban settings. The comment section on TikTok quickly filled with concerns about what could happen if a car stopped in a similar situation with no easy way to intervene.
This incident follows other high-profile reports of Waymo malfunctions, including an earlier case where a Waymo taxi in Arizona drove a passenger in circles until customer support intervened remotely. In another event, Los Angeles police had to remotely disable a driverless vehicle used by a suspect during a police chase.
As the rollout of autonomous taxis expands in US cities, incidents like these raise pressing questions about the technology’s readiness and the need for better emergency protocols.
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