Waymo customer swears off autonomous driving after close call

Waymo has achieved impressive expansion this year.

As of July 2025, Waymo One is available 24/7 to customers in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Waymo partners with Uber in Austin and Atlanta. The company recently announced plans to expand into other cities such as Boston and Seattle.

In July, the company celebrated driving 96 million fully autonomous miles. Waymo had reported traveling 71 million miles autonomously in March after reaching 50 million at the end of 2024.

This week, Jeff Dean, chief scientist for Google DeepMind and Google Research, bragged about Waymo’s three-pronged navigation sensor model that features cameras, LIDAR, and Radar, calling it the “most advanced, large-scale application of embodied AI today.”

But it hasn't been all good news for Waymo this year, and a new viral video shows there are still some kinks to be worked out.

New customer swears off Waymo after rough ride

Waymo has been available in the San Francisco Bay Area since June 2024 and had tested in the area for years before that.

Waymo has approximately 800 autonomous vehicles operating in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to data the company shared with the San Francisco Examiner in August. In April, Waymo said it was delivering over 250,000 paid rides per week in the U.S., a big jump from the 200,000 it reported in February.

Related: Waymo pumps the brakes as dangerous issue comes to light

It's safe to say that citizens of the city are quite familiar with the vehicles and their capabilities.

This week, a San Francisco man decided to satisfy his curiosity and take his first ride with Waymo. In a video circulating online, seconds after the man starts his trip, the autonomous vehicle attempts to pull away from the curb, nearly hitting the vehicle that was about to pass to its left.

The man in the vehicle screams as the car behind him honks furiously. According to the news report of the incident, the man said he will never take a Waymo ride again following the traumatic incident.

Waymo's safety data show that its vehicles are significantly safer than human drivers.

And like the airline industry, Waymo receives little attention when things go right. When things go wrong, however, the results can be dramatic.

Can autonomous vehicles convince the public they are safe?

Waymo says its vehicles represent a 91% reduction in serious injury or worse crashes, a 79% decrease in airbag deployment crashes and an 80% decrease in injury-causing crashes.

Waymo is also safer for non-drivers, with 92% fewer pedestrian crashes resulting in injuries, 78% fewer cyclist crashes resulting in injuries, and 89% fewer motorcycle crashes resulting in injuries.

Related: Waymo investigation could stop autonomous driving in its tracks

Despite those statistics, the public is still skeptical about its safety.

Nearly 80% of California voters support requiring a human safety operator in self-driving trucks and delivery vehicles, and just 33% of voters express a favorable general impression of autonomous vehicles.

"We are increasingly bringing AI from the digital world to the physical world, and it's critically important that we do that in a very careful and considerate way," Rowan Stone, CEO of AI data training company Sapien, told TheStreet.

Sapien currently works with Amazon's AV venture Zoox.

"What we can do better as an entire industry is resist the urge to move quickly and break things, especially when you're dealing with a hunk of metal that could potentially kill people," he said.

Related: Elon Musk celebrates victory over $45 billion rival