More from the article...

... "Why is this happening to me on a Monday? I'm in a Waymo car and this car is just going in circles... I got a flight to catch, why is this thing going in a circle? I'm getting dizzy," he said in the video.

During the video, Johns spoke with a Waymo customer-support representative. "It's circling around a parking lot. I've got my seat belt on, I can't get out of the car. Has this been hacked? What's going on, I feel like I'm in the movies. Is somebody playing a joke on me?" he told the rep. He also asked the Waymo rep if the company would "take care of the flight" if he missed it.

The support rep told Johns, "I don't have an option to control the car," but added, "I am trying to pull it over right now." The car appeared to come to a stop with about two seconds left in the short video, which you can watch here: [link to video in the article] ...

Waymo says the problem only caused a delay of just over five minutes and that Johns was not charged for the trip. A spokesperson for Waymo, which is owned by Google parent Alphabet, told Ars today that the "looping event" occurred on December 9 and was later addressed during a regularly scheduled software update.

Waymo did not answer our question about whether the software update only addressed routing at the specific location the problem occurred at, or a more general routing problem that could have affected rides in other locations. ...