Waymo’s robotaxi depot is still honking its San Francisco neighbors awake

San Francisco neighbors who dwell in a constructing subsequent to a Waymo car parking zone are nonetheless being haunted by in a single day honking. That’s regardless of a repair from the trip hail firm that appears to have fastened the unique drawback — the vehicles beeping their horns within the car parking zone — however has additionally revealed that the problem is a bit of stickier than it could have first appeared.

Waymo stated final week that the honking was the results of a security characteristic triggered when a Waymo automobile detects one other reversing towards it. Sophia Tung, who runs a YouTube livestream of the lot, instructed The Verge in an e mail that the primary night time after Waymo’s patch, a number of of the vehicles missed the car parking zone and inexplicably entered a cul de sac subsequent to her constructing. In a video we seen, the automobiles grew to become backed up within the cul de sac and began honking.

Tung stated the corporate rapidly “disabled the cul de sac utterly and threw us an ice cream social to clean issues over.” Issues have been quiet for a few days after that, she added.

However early this morning, the robotaxis revealed one other edge case when sufficient returned directly {that a} line fashioned to get into the lot. After certainly one of them reversed towards the others ready out on the roadway (the place they’re seemingly free from the tyranny of the lot’s restrictions), it set off a sequence response of Waymo automobiles every backing up, triggering the subsequent one in line to honk and drive backward, and so forth.

Tung stated she’s already reached out to Waymo in regards to the new spherical of honking. She additionally has plans to speak with Waymo product administration and operations director Vishay Nihalani on the livestream tomorrow, beginning at 5:30PM ET.

Waymo didn’t instantly reply to our request for remark.