Waymo’s driverless cars honk at each other, waking neighbors

Waymo driverless cars are coming alive at night, honking at each other and waking residents around the San Francisco parking lot where they sit when not making trips. 

The driverless taxi company has rented a lot outside of an apartment building for the cars to idle in, but the vehicles appear to be honking at each other, as they are trained to do on the road when other cars get close to them.

Waymo attributed the disruptive honking to a feature designed to avoid collisions. 

“We recently introduced a useful feature to help avoid low-speed collisions by honking if other cars get too close while reversing toward us,” the company said in a statement to CBS News. “It has been working great in the city, but we didn’t quite anticipate it would happen so often in our own parking lots.”

Waymo added that it has updated the software that causes the cars to honk “so our electric vehicles should keep the noise down for our neighbors moving forward.”

Video of more than two dozen cars all in the same lot, with some honking at each other, has circulated on social media. Some users commented that they would find the scene funny if it weren’t taking place at 4 a.m., disrupting surrounding neighbors’ ability to sleep. 

Software engineer Sophia Tung has set up a livestream of the lot on YouTube, telling The Verge that she likes watching the cars “come and go” but wishes they would stop honking at each other.  

Waymo’s taxi service is currently available to anyone who download’s the company’s app in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles.