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Kicker: Robot road rage

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WORLD Radio - Kicker: Robot road rage

Self-driving cars circling in a parking lot honk and wake the neighbors


A Waymo self-driving vehicle at the Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, Dec. 16, 2022 Associated Press/Photo by Matt York, File

NICK EICHER, HOST: Self-driving cars certainly have a long regulatory road ahead: big concerns with safety, privacy, liability, even concerns over hackers getting control of cars.

But add one more problem to the list: noise.

Randol White lives in a condo next to a parking lot for Waymo, maker of self-driving cars. One early morning he startled awake at 4 a.m. to car-horns blasting.

RANDOL WHITE: Then it happened again, and again, and I started thinking, well this is an issue.

The “issue” was that a bunch of Waymo automotive automatons were circling the lot and honking at each other all night long! Gives new meaning to the name Waymo, like way-way-way-mo.

Neighbor Russell Pofsky is another who’s had it up to here with the robot road rage!

RUSSELL POFSKY: I could not be more cranky today after these past few weeks. It affects the way you feel.

For its part, Waymo says it’s working on a fix and the noise ought to be way-less from here on out.

It’s The World and Everything in It.


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