When The Waymo Honks Twice – And Backs Up

Just recently we saw videos of a Waymo honking at other vehicles, and now it’s happened to me myself, twice. Yesterday I was driving a Waymo from the Embarcadero to Bush Street in about a 14 minute drive and almost at the very end, vehicles in front of us stopped moving. One vehicle was parked in the no parking lane at that hour with hazard lights on and a pickup truck lined up behind it. The Waymo’s view was blocked and nothing could be done. And then it honked and I caught it on video. Not only that, but it also pulled back briefly to allow us to pass, but the pickup in front of us drove past the parked car, which immediately drove off and followed the pickup, as did we. The situation then repeated itself, with the Waymo starting to drive past.

We can also see this here in the entire 14-minute video. The Waymo honks for the first time at minute 10:39, reverses, becomes impatient at minute 11:15, honks again at minute 11:23, and reverses again shortly afterwards to then turn off.

Perhaps not uninteresting is the visualization of another Waymo Robotaxi that came to a standstill to the left of mine. You can see it at minute 9:54 in the video above

This article was also published in German.