A Waymo robotaxi in Tampa, Florida, briefly entered a lane with oncoming traffic near a Tampa Bay Buccaneers game, forcing its four passengers to exit the vehicle on foot1.
A 26-second video posted on TikTok by user Matt.reardon (@matthewr_83) on October 4, 2026, shows the autonomous vehicle heading down the right side of a road as oncoming vehicles and SUVs swerve around it. The TikTok caption read: "Waymo went rogue in Tampa, FL". The user also wrote that he "thought we were done for a second there". The clip has since gone viral.
The four passengers inside the robotaxi can be heard half-panicking, half-laughing before deciding to grab their belongings and water bottles and exit the Waymo.
Waymo said a vehicle briefly entered a temporary one-way street in Tampa before correcting the issue, and that it is looking into the event to learn more and improve. The company gave the passengers a full refund after the incident. Despite the scare, the passengers said they would try Waymo again in the future.
The incident comes as Waymo pursues aggressive growth. The Alphabet unit plans to expand its autonomous ride-hailing fleet five-fold to 20,000 vehicles by the end of 2027, up from roughly 4,000 cars currently[1]. Waymo also plans to launch its Waymo One service in Toronto in 2028, its first Canadian market[3]. ANALYSIS A high-profile safety incident during a period of rapid scaling adds pressure on Waymo to demonstrate that its autonomous driving system can handle the edge cases that arise in unfamiliar or temporary road configurations.
Waymo's Tampa operations place it in a market where temporary traffic patterns around large sporting events create exactly the kind of unusual road conditions that challenge autonomous systems. ◆ Waymo's statement that the street was a temporary one-way configuration suggests the vehicle's mapping or perception stack did not account for the altered traffic flow.