In today’s episode of robot cars seeming to be very confused, we have the story of a SoMa parking lot that gets taken over by Waymos every night, and keeps the neighborhood awake as the cars incessantly honk horns at each other around 4 am.
It’s a big day for the self-driving car company Waymo, as KRON4 reports they’ll start testing Waymo vehicles on freeways without a human driver starting today. The driverless Waymo vehicles are currently only permitted on surface streets, not highways and freeways. But with this new testing on freeways, the cars will have a human Waymo employee in the vehicle riding as a passenger, presumably to jump in if anything goes wrong. The company is touting this development as a milestone.
But the milestone is being drowned out by a new and unflattering story about Waymo vehicles’ inesplicable behavior. NBC Bay Area reports that Waymo cars are honking at each other through the wee hours of the morning in a South of Market parking lot the company has recently commandeered, infuriating the neighbors, who say the honking peaks at about 4 am.
4 AM Waymo robots honking at each other is insanely bad programming, a public nuisance, and if Waymo doesn't fix/end it a potential legal challenge to their depots.
— John Berry (aniccia.bsky.social) (@aniccia) August 9, 2024
350 2nd Street, SF@SF311@CA_DMV@californiapuc@SFMTA_Muni@NHTSAgov@SenDaveCortesehttps://t.co/NnxivJaEsD pic.twitter.com/XTHENg85a7
The video above shows this bizarre phenomenon, and discloses the parking lot in question is at 350 Second Street. The cars seem to come back to the lot for a nightly recharge or something, at late-night, low-business hours. But they seem to get confused while trying to navigate around one another, then just start honking at one another like crazy, perhaps thinking they are honking at a human driver.
"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," neighbor Christopher Cherry told NBC Bay Area. "It's very distracting during the work day, but most importantly it wakes you up at four in the morning."
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According to the above post, Waymo cars started using the full parking lot there on July 28. The Verge interviews that posts’s author Sophia Tung, who says “the flock will start migrating back” nightly between 7 and 9 pm PT, and the peak honking when the lot is full “usually happens at 4 am or so.”
Tung has also set up a livestream of the suddenly infamous Waymo parking lot, set to the sounds of “LoFi Waymo Hip Hop Radio.”
Waymo said in a statement to NBC Bay Area that "We are aware that in some scenarios our vehicles may briefly honk while navigating our parking lots," and that "We have identified the cause and are in the process of implementing a fix.”
Image: @aniccia via Twitter
