Mystery of midnight honking by Waymo robotaxis solved

• Residents near a San Francisco parking lot faced mysterious nightly noises from Waymo robotaxis.
• The company just announced what caused the problem: a new feature to avoid low-speed crashes.
• A spokesperson told BI the cars have received a software update, so the city should be quieter now.

Residents near a parking lot in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood reported being woken up at unreasonable hours by a mysterious symphony of honking Waymo robotaxis as the driverless cars parked in the lot for the night.

The company just announced they've found — and fixed — the problem.

"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 told Business Insider. "It has been working great in the city, but we didn't quite anticipate it would happen so often in our own parking lots."

The spokesperson added: "We've updated the software, so our electric vehicles should keep the noise down for our neighbors moving forward."

The news should be welcomed by those living nearby, several of whom spoke to various media outlets about being disrupted at all hours by the cacophonous honking.

"We started out with a couple of honks here and there, and then as more and more cars started to arrive, the situation got worse, " Christopher Cherry, who lives near the lot that Waymo cars park in, told NBC Bay Area.

The outlet reported that Cherry documented more than a dozen disruptive incidents of the vehicles honking at all hours of the day and night.

He added: "It's very distracting during the workday, but most importantly it wakes you up at four in the morning."

Speaking to BI after news of the software update came to light, Cherry said: "I have not heard anything at all today really so I'm hopeful that today it is solved!"