Waymo autonomous vehicles were repeatedly honking at each other in a San Francisco parking lot throughout the night, disrupting residents' sleep for several weeks.
In San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood, Waymo autonomous vehicles began using a parking lot off 2nd Street near Harrison Street several weeks ago to rest between rides. The driverless cars have been repeatedly honking at each other while navigating the parking lot, particularly when attempting to back into spots, with the most intense honking occurring around 4:00 AM. Residents in nearby high-rise buildings have been awakened nightly by the noise, with one resident documenting over a dozen honking incidents during a single work day. The vehicles appear to be automatically reacting to each other's presence with no human operators present. Residents Christopher Cherry and Randol White reported the issue to Waymo's corporate headquarters, which initially did not respond until NBC Bay Area inquired about the situation. A Waymo spokesperson acknowledged that their vehicles 'may briefly honk while navigating our parking lots' and stated they had 'identified the cause and are in the process of implementing a fix.' The autonomous nature of the honking has left residents frustrated as there are no drivers to directly ask to stop the behavior.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that fail to perform reliably or effectively under varying conditions, exposing them to errors and failures that can have significant consequences, especially in critical applications or areas that require moral reasoning.
AI system
Due to a decision or action made by an AI system
Unintentional
Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed