this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024

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A nightly Waymo robotaxi parking lot honkfest is waking San Francisco neighbors (www.theverge.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Reminds me of the incident in February where a waymo tried to get through a bunch of street revelers, and their response was to set it on fire. From the old pcmag story :

San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson noted that it had tallied 55 incidents where self-driving vehicles had interfered with rescue operations in the city.

Edit: unrelated to above quote, pc mag also says:

In some cases, residents have put orange cones on the hoods of cars, which makes them temporarily immobile.

(see also the autopian story it references)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Some of the videos of this are really frustrating to watch. Like, what are you trying to do!? You just found your spot, now you're coming back out?? More circling, stopping, going back, going forward. Uughghhh..

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

My guess is you're seeing the computer go into a reject loop until a human operator finally takes over.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

The article itself sounds a lot more relaxed than the heading suggests.

Nonetheless, this is still stuff for c/fuckcars

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

Super easy to solve. Just seta geofence of no hooting. There's a good reason they hoot in the first place, but it's not needed in that lot.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Shocker, self driving “taxi” service is a nuisance.

Almost like the solution to car based issues isn’t “more advanced cars”, but “less cars”.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (3 children)

My super white family is a honkfest. This is just whining because "robotaxis bad". The sirens here in SF are much worse than this.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

US sirens are too high pitched. European sirens have a lower pitch which allows the sound to travel further which allows them to decrease the volume.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago (1 children)

But when the lot starts to fill up (which “usually happens at 4AM or so,” according to Tung) what looks like a maddening ballet of autonomous parking — and honking — begins. The noise goes for as much as an hour at a time before it settles down, she said.

Did you read the article? Because that sounds really egregious.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but that just describes the video if you're playing it up. Also, firetruck sirens go all night as well.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Not continuously for an hour. I've lived opposite an ER and it wasn't as bad as whats described above. Much louder, but also much less frequent.

In the UK there are actually laws around not sounding your horn at night.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

UK sirens aren't half as obnoxious as US sirens. US sirens are higher pitched and loud enough to given pedestrians hearing damage

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

For several years I lived on O'Farrel Street, between Hyde and Leavenworth, which if you know SF is basically the middle of the biggest East-West Transit route in the city. There was literally a 24-hour "Owl" bus stop outside our front window. That was noisy, even for SF.

This is right in line with the other spots I've lived in the city (SoMa, avenues).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

This is right in line with the other spots I’ve lived in the city (SoMa, avenues).

This is definitely normal for SoMA but down at 2nd st is approaching the financial district which is usually a bit quieter at night. I can understand someone who's just not used to it, or used to living in noisy parts of the city being upset or surprised about it.

But also 2nd/folsom is right at the bridge on-ramp which I would imagine is getting a fair deal of freeway noise 🤷‍♀️

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Idk, this is firmly in the SoMa/ "East Cut". They just don't like robotaxis. :P

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

Looking forward to the "Waymo robotaxis become silent killers stalking the night" headlines once the fix is implemented.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Could barely sleep, literally heard it in my dreams.

I do think that there's an argument that maybe apartment buildings should be required to list some kind of sound isolation metrics.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Doesn't help in summer...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I wonder if Colorado has required this because I know when I was looking at apartments about 11 years ago they told us the decibel reduction of the windows and doors in the apartments we looked at that were near highways. And then a few years later in 2016 when we were house shopping they told us the sound reduction for the houses that were near major roads. I’ll have to look it up and see if it’s a law or not.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I don't think I'd want to live anywhere it is necessary to worry about sounds reduction levels. Wow.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Yeah we got a place where I can sit outside in the sun and hardly hear anything. But really if you get a single family home anywhere within a few hundred feet of an artery you’re going to be dealing with road noise. So it applies almost in every city in America.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You have never been to a car centric city? Cars are loud af. Noise pollution from cars is so bad that studies have been able to link living next to higher traffic roads with poorer health outcomes

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I've visited NY and Chicago, but I guess my digs were nice enough not to notice. And I used to live 75 minutes (assuming no traffic lol) from DC—far enough away that I didn't have to deal with that kind of thing. Just like maybe some highway noise from far away.

I did once have a townhouse that had a rail track in the back yard, but I know what I was getting in that case. It was only noisy when there was a train.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Interesting, I'd guess that you are better than average at tuning traffic noises out then. I am probably worse than average myself as traffic would constantly wake me up when I lived downtown.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

It's something you have to worry about in basically all apartments (in the US--despite thin walls and no insulation, I never had loud and inconsiderate neighbors when I lived in Japan). You might get lucky and get a place with good soundproofing, but the odds are slim.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

Video from the story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CN8k831Qp0