Robotaxis frustrate sleepless residents with constant honking

The world’s only self-driving taxi company has been forced to fix a fleet of cars after residents complained about their constant honking.

Waymo’s autonomous cars arrived in a car park in San Francisco, California, a few weeks ago, where they wait between jobs.

However, the cars were installed with an update that made them beep their horns whenever another car reversed close to them.

Christopher Cherry, who lives next to the car park, told Sky’s US partner NBC Bay Area he was “really excited” to have Waymo in the neighbourhood when they moved in, thinking it would bring more security and quiet to the area.

Instead, the taxis beeped at each other right through the night as they parked or set off on a journey, making it hard to sleep.

“We started out with a couple of honks here and there, and then as more and more cars started to arrive, the situation got worse,” Mr Cherry said.

“The cars are robotic and they’re honking at each other and there’s no one in the cars when it’s happening, and that’s absurd.”

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One resident got so irate that she started livestreaming the car park on YouTube, gathering tens of thousands of views on some of her videos.

“Help,” says Sophia Tung at the end of one of her videos where the cars can be heard beeping late at night.

Mr Cherry said the honking happens daily at different levels, with the most intense honking occurring at around 4am and at evening rush hour times.

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

The cars appear to head off to their charging depot at around 4am – a “parade” of autonomous taxis that caused great anticipation on the YouTube livestream.

Hundreds of viewers eagerly waited for the cars to start leaving on Wednesday morning.

“It’s starting, everyone,” said one viewer. “Parade time!” said another.

Ms Tung’s viewers have even made a Google spreadsheet with timecodes for the most interesting moments in the car park, such as excessive honking or a fun bit of parking by one of the cars.

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‘We didn’t quite anticipate’

The taxi firm, which is owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, said the honking problem is now fixed.

“We recently introduced a useful feature to help avoid low-speed collisions by honking if other cars get too close while reversing toward us,” said a Waymo spokesperson to Sky News.

“It has been working great in the city, but we didn’t quite anticipate it would happen so often in our own parking lots.

“We’ve updated the software, so our electric vehicles should keep the noise down for our neighbours moving forward,” they said.

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As the cars left their car park at 4am on Wednesday, the honking did indeed appear to be solved.

Ms Tung confirmed to her hundreds of live viewers in the chat: “They didn’t honk”.

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