Self-driving cars are causing a nightmare in San Francisco because they keep driving down a ’dead-end’ street to the annoyance of residents.
SELF-driving cars are causing a nightmare in San Francisco because they keep driving down a “dead-end” street.
Residents in a cul-de-sac in the Californian city have been left furious by the cars from autonomous-driving firm Waymo, because they have been driving up and down their street at all hours “for weeks”.
Local news station KPIX reports that residents say vehicles sometimes have to queue before making multi-point turns to leave the way they came.
Jennifer King, who lives in the area, told KPIX: “There are some days where it can be up to 50. It’s literally every five minutes. And we’re all working from home, so this is what we hear.”
The woman also said the human “safety drivers” sitting in the vehicles “don’t have much to say other than the car is programmed and they’re just doing their job”.
However, Waymo has insisted the cars are just “obeying road rules” designed to limit traffic in certain residential streets.
A spokesman said the vehicles sometimes take a detour because of the presence nearby of one of San Francisco’s “slow streets”, which aim to limit traffic in certain residential areas.
Because of this, the cars can occasionally be diverted down “dead-end” roads in an attempt to avoid the designated slow areas.
The company said: “We continually adjust to dynamic San Francisco road rules. In this case, cars travelling north of California on 15th Avenue have to take a U-turn due to the presence of ‘slow streets’ signage on Lake.
“So, the Waymo driver was obeying the same road rules that any car is required to follow.”
Waymo – which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet – began testing its self-driving taxi service earlier this year.
– BANG ShowBiz Tech
