San Francisco, United States

The autonomous robotaxis, which belonged to Waymo, turned into a nightmare for the residents of San Francisco when they started honking for no apparent reason in the parking lot at the crack of dawn and disrupted the sleep of people. 

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Software engineer Sophia Tung, who lives just above the parking space for the driverless cabs, criticised the Alphabet-owned subsidiary for the unwanted noise at 4 am in the morning. 

“The entire night I was hearing the boop boop boop of waymos backing up and pulling in/out,” Tung wrote on Threads.

“Could barely sleep, literally heard it in my dreams. Still at it this morning,” she added. 

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In the follow-up posts, she wrote, “Now there is a traffic jam. They’re all honking at each other and getting a bit aggressive. Attendant has no idea what to do.”

Waymo robotaxis daily honking gets on the nerves of residents 

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A live stream of the honking cabs, with the title “When it’s 4 am but the waymos are getting aggressive in the parking lot" was posted by Tung on social media. 

In the video, the cars are seen honking while waiting to get parked behind other vehicles. 

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Speaking to tech news site The Verge, Tung said that Waymo vehicles which finish for the day “start migrating back” to the parking space between 7 pm and 9 pm local time from Sunday to Thursday and at around 11 pm till midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.

The parking begins to fill up “usually…at 4 a.m. or so,” as per Tung. Speaking to The Verge, a Waymo spokesperson said that the company is “aware that in some scenarios our vehicles may briefly honk while navigating our parking lots.”

The spokesperson said that the company has figured out why have the cars been honking unnecessarily and is working to fix it.

Watch: China`s drivers anxious as Robotaxis gain ground

Waymo was officially conceived as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009 and was rebranded in 2016.

It started testing its autonomous vehicles and the robotaxis were rolled on the roads of San Francisco in August 2019.

Waymo was permitted by California regulators to test the cars without using human safety drivers in 2021.

However, San Francisco residents complained about the cars driving slowly and stopping mid-way which can cause congestion on the road. 

(With inputs from agencies)