Waymo’s self-driving cars no longer beep when they approach each other, Vishay Nihalani, Waymo’s director of product and operations, said in a software engineer appearance yesterday. . Cars have been seen urged Waymo to release a software patch a few weeks ago.
as Residents living near a parking lot full of Waymo taxis reported that even after the patch was released, the taxis were still honking at each other. Tung, who lives near the abandoned taxis, set up a live stream to capture the cacophony of honking cars.
No good stream is complete without a soundtrack, and Tung’s stream featured lo-fi music in the vein of the ubiquitous YouTube movie LoFi Girl. The title “Relax/Study To Relax/Study To Self Driving Taxi Depot Shenanigans” was an obvious homage to LoFi Girl’s channel (And yes, she had permission to use the music.) Despite the removal of the edit, the stream last Saturday morning at 4- also caught the cars that kept on honking.
Nihalani joined the stream to talk to Tung about the ongoing beeping. According to the director, car horns were an intentional feature for taxis on public roads to avoid collisions, but honking at each other while idling in a parking lot was never intentional. All taxis are now updated .
Waymo’s service is available to residents of San Francisco, Phoenix and the 79-square-mile area. It stretches from Santa Monica to Downtown. In May, the company announced the production of taxis . Even if you’re back in San Francisco, you can still listen to Tung’s chilling live broadcast in the parking lot — just without the buzz.
