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Over years of testing, self-driving cars in San Francisco have been at the center all kinds of automative hijinks—blocking traffic, interrupting fire fighters, killing a dog, getting stuck in wet concrete, being covered in cones by protesters—and that seems set to continue.
A staging zone lot full of Waymo robo-taxis in the SoMa neighborhood has been irritating local residents in recent weeks, as the autonomous vehicles reportedly honk at each other through the wee hours of the morning.
"It’s very distracting during the work day, but most importantly it wakes you up at four in the morning," Christopher Cherry, who lives in a building near the lot, told NBC Bay Area.
Residents say the honking began in July and often reaches its peak during the early morning, when few people are calling for Uber-like rides in the Waymo taxis.
The spectacle of driverless cars honking to warn other driverless cars of their presence was so bizarre that nearby resident Sophia Tung even set up a livestream of the lot, set to relaxing lo-fi hip-hip hop music.
“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 spokeperson told The Independent. “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 neighbors moving forward.”
The livestream for Wednesday morning indeed showed scores of Waymo taxis navigating around each other in the tight lot, but without mass honking.
The cars have been at the center of a heated debate in San Francisco and beyond about their safety and ethics.
Last year, GM-backed Cruise suspended its fleet of AVs around the country after one of the vehicles hit a woman and dragged her 20 feet.
The company has begun apply for permits to operate in San Francisco and the rest of the state, according to The San Francisco Examiner.
