20 seconds of terror: California couple's self-driving robotaxi speeds through construction zone, company offers $120 in free rides

A California couple had the most harrowing 20 seconds of their life when their self-driving Waymo robotaxi went haywire and began speeding through a highway construction zone. The company offered him $120 in free rides, compensating for the life-threatening experience he and his fiancée had, though Elliot Slade, the man, said he did not know if he would ever be able to ride a robotaxi.

The couple was traveling back to their Mission District home when the Waymo started "freaking out". "The Waymo started freaking out as we got closer to the merge cause the lanes were kind of all merging," Slade said. "One lane was gone, another lane was, who knows where it was. Cars were all over the place going in."

Initially, they thought it was just some malfunctioning and were taking videos but then they were scared for their lives as they thought they were going to die inside the car. "The scariest part, we're all like OK, something's happening," he said. "We're just going to pull over, we're going to be safe. Then it accelerated to highway speeds down this construction lane."

"There were construction signs," he added. "There were lights going on. Police in the distance and it sped up. That's when I looked at my fiancée, we're done. This is it. We're dead. We're going to die right here in the Waymo."

Slade says the Waymo sped up for roughly 20 seconds. It eventually got off the highway and pulled over in a residential neighborhood. That's when they finally heard from a Waymo representative.

"She came on the line and said from what I could see, it seemed like a stressful experience," he recalls the voice saying. "What do you want to do next? I was like we want to get out. They're like do you want to continue the journey; I was like absolutely not."

Waymo started service on the freeways in November of 2025 in four cities: San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Miami.

"Safety is Waymo's top priority, both for our riders and everyone we share the road with," Waymo said in a statement. "We have temporarily paused freeway operations, as we work to integrate recent technical learnings into our software and expect to resume these routes soon."

"What was scary was that for the first time, we felt completely helpless," he said. "You can't jump into the seat. No one was picking up. It was going at 70 [mph] on this construction lane into what we thought were like trucks. And police and everything. I was like what can we do. We can't even open the door. What do we do at this point?"
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