Waymo’s Self-Driving Cars Have Suddenly Started Honking at Each Other at 4 a.m.

As NBC reports, Waymo’s robotaxis have been waking up San Franciscans in the wee hours of the morning with polyphonic horn concerts, honking at each other as if they had an energetic person behind the wheel. But they drive themselves.

Why it matters. This comical incident suggests that integrating self-driving cars into urban environments is more complicated than it looks. And that interactions between machines, even among themselves, can have human consequences.

The context. A few months ago, after a testing period, Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car company, opened its fleet to any customer in San Francisco. It rented a parking lot in the South of Market neighborhood to give its cars a break and prevent them from driving for too many hours.

@curiosior

@Waymo robots gather together at 4 AM every morning in front of my apartment and honk their horns at each other. This absurdity happens most of the day. #robot #car #cars #carsoftiktok #fyp #selfdriving

♬ Comedy Scenes - Comical, stupid, odd, lovely (Drumless)(1441321) - Ponetto

What happened? Waymo cars have been honking at each other while trying to park. The most annoying period is around 4:00 a.m.

• Like the one in the video above, some neighbors have woken up due to the honking.
• The noise lasted up to an hour.
• One neighbor broadcasted the whole show live.

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Waymo’s explanation. The company recently added automatic honking to its cars to avoid low-speed collisions but didn’t expect the vehicles to use it so repeatedly for their parking attempts. Waymo also says it has identified the problem and is working on a solution.

In perspective. It’s a funny-sounding incident, but it reminds us that introducing autonomous driving technology into urban spaces can have unforeseen side effects on neighbors.

As self-driving cars become more commonplace on our roads and streets, we’ll likely see more similar incidents between robots and humans. Everything will be fine if being woken up by honking horns in the wee hours of the morning is the worst of it.

This article was written by Javier Lacort and originally published in Spanish on Xataka.

Image | Gibblesmash in Unsplash

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