Waymo’s Self-Driving Car Blocks A Dead-End In San Francisco.

Key Sentence:

• Residents of a dead-end street in San Francisco said they were annoyed by the influx of self-driving vehicles.
• According to local news channel KPIX, Autonomous Driving Company Waymo, cars move up and down at all weekly hours.

Locals say vehicles sometimes have to queue before turning at some points to leave the road they are on. Waymo said the vehicles “only comply with traffic regulations,” which are designed to limit traffic on certain residential streets. “There are days when you get to 50,” Jennifer King told KPIX. “It’s every five minutes. And we all work from home, so we hear it.”

He said that the human “safety drivers” driving automated cars “had nothing to say except that the cars were programmed and just did their job.” A Waymo spokesperson said cars sometimes swerve because one of San Francisco’s “slow roads” limits traffic in certain residential areas.

“We are constantly adapting to the dynamic traffic regulations in San Francisco. For example, in this case, a car traveling on 15th Avenue in northern California had to turn around due to a “Slow Road” sign on the lake,” the company said.

“So Waymo drivers follow the same road rules that every car has to obey.”

Elon Musk, whose car company Tesla also aims for automated driving, responded to a Twitter message about the Waymo issue with a simple “Haha.” Waymo, which Google parent company Alphabet owns, began testing a self-driving taxi service in San Francisco earlier this year – with steering wheel specialists able to use it when needed.

Self-driving cars are still a relatively new technology, which is why so many accidents and errors have been reported around the world. In May, a Waymo taxi blocked a road in Arizona after being distracted by a traffic cone. The company has been offering driverless services in Phoenix, Arizona, since October 2020.