With General Motors’ autonomous driving subsidiary Cruise busy reorganizing itself in the aftermath of a public relations meltdown, rival Waymo has been hard at work developing its own self-driving technology, includes systems to ensure its occupants remain as safe as possible at all times. However, one such tech has been keeping San Francisco residents awake in the wee hours of the morning.
According to a report from Automotive News, Waymo robotaxi units honk at each other as they return to a parking lot Waymo uses to store its AVs. As the self-driving vehicles park themselves, they keep getting in each other’s way, and respond how many human drivers would, which is by laying on the horn.
Interestingly, there are no occupants in the robotaxis while they shuffle to park themselves in the lot.
“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 noted. “It has been working great in the city, but we didn’t quite anticipate it would happen so often in our own parking lots.”
It’s worth noting that per NBC, Alphabet’s autonomous driving subsidiary has already implemented a fix that should stop the late-night honking.
Of course, Waymo began offering rides to all San Francisco users just two months ago, as GM Authority covered. Previously, it had been limited to a select number of areas. Notably, this was the second city-wide rollout Waymo had kicked off since it opened its Phoenix, Arizona robotaxi service in 2020.
“We’re committed to growing our service gradually and responsibly,” a Waymo spokesperson remarked. “We work closely with city and state officials, first responders, and advocates for road safety to ensure our service helps local communities gain access to reliable, safe, environmentally friendly transportation and has a positive impact on mobility.”
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Comments
Anyone that believes that we or our own sons and daughters will be living in a world of self-driving pods that will drive us around and no single human driver will live among us is living in pure delusion in a fantasy world filled with fairies and unicorns. To me, these robotaxi and autonomous programs are a DOA ordeal and are a bigger waste of money where they should be spending it in making EVs better and more accessible to families.
Amazing. The AI taxis act just like human operated taxis.
If AI becomes self aware & acting like humans, how far is Judgement Day? ? ?
Exactly. There have been countless franchises that warned of the dangers of highly advanced AIs. Terminator, iRobot, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Matrix, and several in the anime and videogame fields. I think we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves with this AI push. If these franchises haven’t taught us to be cautious with these technologies then we deserve our own extinction. At the end of the day, Darwin has a job to do.
The real fix is to remove these menaces off the road. There is no other way!
Respectfully, would think “honking horns” are one of the least things San Fransisco residence would be truly concerned about addressing / fixing…..