Waymo’s robotaxi depot remains to be honking its San Francisco neighbors awake

San Francisco neighbors who reside 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 journey 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 difficulty is a little bit stickier than it might have first appeared.

Waymo mentioned final week that the honking was the results of a security characteristic triggered when a Waymo automotive detects one other reversing towards it. Sophia Tung, who runs a YouTube livestream of the lot, instructed The Verge in an electronic mail that the primary evening 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 considered, the autos turned backed up within the cul de sac and began honking.

Tung mentioned the corporate rapidly “disabled the cul de sac utterly and threw us an ice cream social to clean issues over.” Issues had 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 shaped 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 autos every backing up, triggering the subsequent one in line to honk and drive backward, and so forth.

Tung mentioned she’s already reached out to Waymo concerning 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.