San Francisco neighbors say repeated Waymo honking is keeping them up at night

In San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, neighbors say repeated honking from Waymo driverless cars is disturbing their sleep.

Multiple residents in high-rise buildings off of 2nd Street near Harrison Street told NBC Bay Area News they have been hearing Waymo vehicles honking in a nearby parking lot for the past several weeks. They said that the lot began to be occupied by Waymo vehicles just a few weeks ago. The Waymos appear to go to the lot to rest in between rides.

Christopher Cherry who lives in the building next door said he was “really excited” to have Waymo in the neighborhood, thinking it would bring more security and quiet to the area.

“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, ” Cherry said.

Cherry said the honking happens daily at different levels, with the most intense honking occurring at around 4:00 a.m. and at evening rush hour times.

“It’s very distracting during the work day, but most importantly it wakes you up at four in the morning,” said Cherry, who documented more than a dozen times Thursday when a series of honks disrupted his work-from-home.

Videos from residents of these incidents show Waymo cars filing into the parking lot, and then attempting to back into spots, which appears to trigger honking from the other Waymo cars.

“The cars are robotic and they’re honking at each other and there’s no one in the cars when it’s happening, and that’s absurd,” Cherry said.

“I didn’t even know Waymos had a horn,” laughed Randol White, who lives in a building nearby. “But it’s not so funny when you’re not getting a good night’s rest.”

Neighbors note, there is no one in the cars that they can flag down and ask to stop the honking.

“I think the most frustrating thing about this is that there is just nobody to talk to, and even at the corporate level, I am finding it difficult, not impossible,” White said.

Both White and Cherry say they have reported the repeated honking to Waymo and are waiting to hear back.

In a statement to NBC Bay Area on Saturday, a Waymo spokesperson said, “We are aware that in some scenarios our vehicles may briefly honk while navigating our parking lots.”

“We have identified the cause and are in the process of implementing a fix,” the spokesperson continued.

The residents who spoke with NBC Bay Area said they are not opposed to having the Waymo cars nearby. But they say they want to see a more neighborly response from the new autonomous vehicle company on the block.

“We love having them there, we just would like for them to stop honking their horn at four in the morning repeatedly,” Cherry said.

White says he has his fingers crossed for “some sort of fix where they can come here and just be quiet.”