Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use • Hacker News Board

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#21

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 7:12 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #6

stcredzero wrote: post #2

In the early 2000's, I was hanging out sometimes in western North Carolina, and there was this young woman who has in the habit of getting together with some friends and driving around the clock to get to Colorado and back on short trips, instead of flying. I'm wondering if this technology isn't going to be used for such purposes.

If I could get in my car, read a bit and fall asleep, and wake up in Las Vegas from San Francisco, I'd prefer it over flying every time. But this has more to do with how air travel has become miserable than anything else.

[deleted]

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#22

Post by artmageddon » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 7:12 PM UTC

resoluteteeth wrote: post #3

stcredzero wrote: post #2

In the early 2000's, I was hanging out sometimes in western North Carolina, and there was this young woman who has in the habit of getting together with some friends and driving around the clock to get to Colorado and back on short trips, instead of flying. I'm wondering if this technology isn't going to be used for such purposes.

With self-driving cars it would probably be possible to design the seats so that with only one passenger it would be possible to lie down fully. This could make overnight drives in personal cars quite pleasant relative to buses.

> With self-driving cars it would probably be possible to design the seats so that with only one passenger it would be possible to lie down fully.

Is there a way to properly and safely restrain someone who is lying down when a collision occurs? I can only imagine the number of broken necks or spinal compression injuries resulting from hitting another vehicle at 60mph+.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#23

Post by zyxley » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 7:12 PM UTC

resoluteteeth wrote: post #3

stcredzero wrote: post #2

In the early 2000's, I was hanging out sometimes in western North Carolina, and there was this young woman who has in the habit of getting together with some friends and driving around the clock to get to Colorado and back on short trips, instead of flying. I'm wondering if this technology isn't going to be used for such purposes.

With self-driving cars it would probably be possible to design the seats so that with only one passenger it would be possible to lie down fully. This could make overnight drives in personal cars quite pleasant relative to buses.

Imagine being able to 'road trip' by going to sleep in your car at home, waking up in a different city, spending the day there, and being home against the next morning.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#24

Post by bliti » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 7:13 PM UTC

This is an expansion on cruise control capabilities and not self-driving. Its a step up, of course. But not what the title may make you think.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#25

Post by aidenn0 » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 7:14 PM UTC

nugget wrote: post #5

stcredzero wrote: post #2

In the early 2000's, I was hanging out sometimes in western North Carolina, and there was this young woman who has in the habit of getting together with some friends and driving around the clock to get to Colorado and back on short trips, instead of flying. I'm wondering if this technology isn't going to be used for such purposes.

Would you be more willing to live 2 hours outside of SF if you could hop in a self-driving car 3x/week and watch a movie/surf the net during a trip into the office? That's the most exciting part of it for me.

My commute is currently the longest it's been in 10 years at 7 minutes (as my family has grown, I've had to move further from downtown). Having commuted longer distances, both by bus and by car, I still say that nothing beats a short commute.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#26

Post by Retric » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 7:16 PM UTC

TrevorJ wrote: post #4

The real problem with self-driving cars is the car to human handoff. Over the long term it's incredible unlikely that humans will be any good at all at remaining aware and 'up to speed' on the current situation in the event that the car needs to give control back to the driver due to road conditions, hardware failure, or sudden situation that it cannot contend with.

Depends on what the failure modes are.

Object avoidance and control in slippery conditions is a vastly easier problem than a 100% self driving car. So, if the default is a car that safely slows down to a stop while beeping loudly then hand-offs are a non issue.

Remember, the state of the art in human driving still kills 32,000+ people per year in the US and something like 1+ million worldwide. Beating that seems very doable.

EX: You show up at a concert and parking attendants are directing people to an open field. Car goes WTF, stops and hands off.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#27

Post by ben1040 » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 7:17 PM UTC

This looks like the "Sensing" feature that Honda has implemented on some of their other vehicles. I just bought a 2016 Accord that does the same thing -- there's a camera mounted on the windshield, another camera in the front grille, and a radar sensor on the front bumper.

Calling it "self-driving" is kind of a misnomer and I think the article kind of blows it out of proportion.

It will track the car in front of you and keep a safe following distance, keeping either the maximum cruise control speed you've set, or whatever speed the vehicle ahead of you is driving, whichever is slower. It will accelerate or brake accordingly. It will also attempt to stay in the lane by using the onboard cameras for tracking the lane markings.

The lane keeping assist is not nearly as autonomous as the article makes it out to be. It does not like to work on sharper curves on the freeway, for one -- the system will disengage and tell you to steer manually. It still wants you to keep your hands on the wheel. It must be looking for very very subtle movements on the wheel, because the system will yell at you if you take your hands off the wheel for longer than 10-15 seconds.

All in all it's a pretty cool feature for longer road trips (keeping in your lane can just get kind of tiring, even with cruise control) but it's not the sort of autonomous driving that the article here paints it out to be.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#28

Post by timClicks » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 7:18 PM UTC

mchahn wrote: post #20

adekok wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal desktop failure modes don't work well here. "Hi, this is your car. I've discovered that the road is icy, and am currently in the middle of a 360. Would you like to (a) take over, (b) call an ambulance, or (c) retry?" Too late! You've crashed.

> and am currently in the middle of a 360. You have no faith in AI. The car will always be better at driving than the human. It would be much better at handling a 360 than a human ever could. Actually humans are very bad at handling 360s unless you are a pro.

As long as the sensors, networking, compute and actuators are all functional.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#29

Post by maxerickson » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 7:18 PM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #19

mrspeaker wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My initial thoughts about self-driving cars was that they would be less bad for the environment, thanks to more people being able to share one car - but the more likely scenario will be opposite: convoys of cars with one sleeping person in each.

As I mentioned in a previous thread some time ago, where does this notion of self-driving cars suddenly meaning shared cars come from? To some people these things seem to be joined at the hip.

Because the self driving aspect enables dispatch.

Prompting a human that is also driving to make a 3 block detour is pretty hard to do safely. Prompting a passenger to see if they will take a 3 block detour to save cost is not so hard to do safely.

The self driving vehicles would also be reporting available ride shares to people looking to make trips.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#30

Post by michaelbuckbee » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 7:18 PM UTC

TrevorJ wrote: post #4

The real problem with self-driving cars is the car to human handoff. Over the long term it's incredible unlikely that humans will be any good at all at remaining aware and 'up to speed' on the current situation in the event that the car needs to give control back to the driver due to road conditions, hardware failure, or sudden situation that it cannot contend with.

What you are describing is a very real issue, but I think you have to weigh it against just how bad humans are at driving in general (DUI, Texting, phone calls, distracted, tired).

I wonder if even at the really primitive state of SDC if they aren't better (in terms of safety) overall than human drivers.