Glitched self-driving robotaxis wreak havoc on residents with “distracting” 4 AM honking

Self-driving taxi cars in San Franciso kept locals awake by honking at each other throughout the night, but Waymo has come to the rescue.

In San Fransico, a parking lot of self-driving ‘Waymo’ vehicles was keeping local residents awake, as the robotaxis won’t stop honking at each other through the night.

According to NBC, the lot in question first started to be taken over by Waymo, the self-driving taxi company, a few weeks ago on July 28.

Since then, the previously empty lot has been filling up with the brand’s robotaxis during their breaks in between booked rides.

Local residents explained to NBC, that the honking began from there, and “got worse” the more cars arrived into the lot.

Waymo

Christopher Cherry explained to NBC that the honking occurs daily, and is at its worst during rush hour and at 4 AM.

Cherry explained, “It’s very distracting during the work day, but most importantly it wakes you up at four in the morning.”

On July 29, software engineer Sohpia Tung posted on Threads about the exact same lot. Since it was bought over, Tung “could barely sleep” due to the constant honkings and backing up of the self-driving cars.

Speaking to The Verge, Tung stated that around 4 AM, when the lot gets busy, it sounds like a “maddening ballet of autonomous parking and honking.”

However, instead of just living with it, Tung transformed the noisy lot into a chill LoFi stream on YouTube, live streaming the robotaxis goings-on using a spare mini PC and a webcam.

Luckily, as you can hear from the recent live streams, the honking seems to have since subdued.

Chris Bonelli, a Waymo spokesperson, explained to The Verge on August 13 that the software of the self-driving cars has since been updated, “so our electric vehicles should keep the noise down for our neighbors moving forward.”

It’s thought that a feature, designed to avoid low-speed collisions, was to blame for the noisy cars. The feature meant the cars would honk if they got too close to one another, however how that would affect quiet resident areas likely wasn’t “quite anticipated.”

You can still check out Tung’s “LoFi Waymo Hip Hop Radio” live stream on YouTube. However, you won’t be able to hear the incessant sounds of the robotaxis honking at each other any more.