Waymo’s self-driving test cars are, in a word, annoying. You could argue that they’re unsafe, or bloodlusted, but rarely do they rise to the sort of damage seen from their competitors — for the most part, they just annoy other drivers. Now, though, the company has finally innovated a way to annoy even non-drivers: Setting up parking lots full of cars that honk at all hours of the night.
The Verge spoke to Sophia Tung, a software engineer out in San Francisco whose apartment is adjacent to a parking lot that was recently fully taken over by Waymo. Tung started a livestream documenting the lot’s activity, which overlays the sight and sound of undriven crossovers with lo-fi music.
Tung told the Verge all about Waymo’s slow but inexorable takeover of the lot beneath her apartment, but she posted more poetic, unvarnished thoughts about the cars on Threads:
Apparently as of last night the parking lot in front of my building became a waymo lot. The entire night I was hearing the boop boop boop of waymos backing up and pulling in/out. Could barely sleep, literally heard it in my dreams. Still at it this morning
Self-driving car noises in your dreams have to be the worst sort of Tetris Effect, right? The knowledge, even when you sleep, that these all-white crossovers lurk immediately below you, simply waiting. God forbid the fleet of EVs ever learns to tackle stairs.
