Waymo Says It's Stopped the Overnight Honking

Waymo promises it has made a fix to stop its driverless vehicles from honking at each other in the middle of the night while residents of a San Francisco neighborhood are trying to sleep. It happens when the cars return to a company parking lot, KNTV reports. As they try to pull into spots, they honk if they get too close to a fellow Waymo vehicle, lights on and blinkers blinking. One resident posted video of six of the vehicles going to an adjoining street and appearing to get stuck at the end of the line. "I would find it funny if it wasn't 4am," Randol White posted with a video of the confusion last week, per USA Today.

"We've updated the software, so our electric vehicles should keep the noise down for our neighbors moving forward," a Waymo spokesman said Tuesday. But it happened again that night. The company then said its repair stopped the honking in the parking lot but led to the jam on the street. On Wednesday, Waymo said it installed a second fix to the feature that kicked off in January to avert low-speed collisions. White, who's a customer himself, said that seemed to do it. "San Francisco and the Bay Area, we are a hotbed of innovation and we try new things," White said, adding, "This is a hiccup, it's an annoyance." (More Waymo stories.)