The world’s only self-driving taxi company has been forced to fix a fleet of cars after US residents complained about their constant honking, Sky News reported.
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,” 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.”
Cherry said the honking happened daily at different levels, with the most intense period at around 4am and at evening rush hour times.
The cars appeared to head off to their charging depot at around 4am.
The taxi company, owned by Google parent Alphabet, told Sky News the honking problem was 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,” a Waymo spokesperson said.
“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.”
