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

wsj.com

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

#151

Post by Kluny »

kazinator wrote: post #127
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor blinker usage drives me nuts. Yes, there are some cases where, well, stuff happens. A driver forgets until the last minute. Many times I see them hit the blinker a split second after they've changed lanes. But far more frequently, I see the driver who is drifting between lanes at will, without thinking of the blinker, and seemingly without a care in the world. This is disturbing, especially since if I'm seeing t…

If you want to cut in, gaining an advantage over traffic, it behooves you to keep your intent undisclosed. Some drivers in the advantaged lane will make it difficult to merge if they see the intent, by closing the gaps. (Those who make it easy are enablers of cutting-in behavior, despised by everyone). It's safer if you don't announce your intent; you don't want to be encouraging the driver in the target lane to be t…

I've never found that to be an advantage. Usually if I indicate that I want to pull in, the driver behind me will immediately make room. On the rare occasions when they don't, it often turns out they had a good reason for keeping me out (like something they could see but I couldn't.) I'm comfortable assuming that's always the case.

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

#152

Post by fudged71 »

BrandonY wrote: post #73
Someone1234 wrote: post #11

Just for comparison, you can get a Subaru Legacy Premium with Eyesight for $25,835 (or a Crosstrek for thereabouts, and an Outback for $2-3K more), since at least summer 2015. So nothing Honda are doing here is revolutionary technologically, they're just bringing the same technology to a new market ($5K cheaper), which is still something. I highly recommend that if you invest in THIS technology that you go all in and…

I also really enjoy my Subaru EyeSight. I've only run into one terrible experience, and that is when I went into a automated car wash. As soon as the first big scrubby thing approached, the EyeSight flipped out and slammed on the brake, which was jolting and scary. Kind of obvious looking back on it, of course, and now I remember to turn it off when I wash my car.

You're supposed to turn off your car when you're in a car wash, so I'm not exactly sure that this was the car's fault :)

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

#153

Post by justinlardinois »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #101
jklowden wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free-market ideology if you ask me. The first sentence suggests the hapless government wants to spent $4 billion on research for something you you can have today for $20K. A little later it mentions Washington's "time and billions" spent on fuel-efficiency instead of "saving lives". The government has also funded electric-car research and encouraged Detroit to build them. Contrasting self-driving with electric drive…

Yes, the WSJ is known for its free-market ideology :) But I think they have a point. The gov't has largely focused on fuel economy for decades now, while tens of thousands of people continued to die or suffer horrible injuries in cars. Sure, seat belts, crumple zones -- a good start. Unleaded? Not sure how that saves you in a crash.

> Yes, the WSJ is known for its free-market ideology :)

Yes, in its editorials. But it's otherwise known for quality, more-or-less objective journalism, which makes this article a bit of a disappointment.

Then again, I'm reminded of that Paul Graham article about working with newspapers―pretty much any topic except politics or war, according to him, is written about because someone with an interest pitched the article to the author. Perhaps Honda has more to do with this article's bent than the WSJ editors.

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

#154

Post by SilasX »

prostoalex wrote: post #71
mikeash wrote: post #31

The article really wants to compare with electric vehicles, for some reason. The subheading says "they are being snapped up faster than electrified vehicles." This is repeated in the article, which says the relevant options packages "are being snapped up at a far higher rate than electrified vehicles." Discussing the Q50's technology package and how many buyers opt for it, it says "That’s three times as many people w…

WSJ editorial board does not like the electric vehicle, emission and carbon tax credits, considering it crony capitalism http://www.wsj.com/articles/voters-should-be-mad-at-electric...

Well, yeah. You should tax the thing you're actually trying to reduce (carbon emissions), rather than subsidize a specific means of reducing one mode of producing that thing.

The former unleashes entrepreneurial ingenuity on all ways of economizing on the targeted resource; the latter plugs only one of many leaks, rewards the wrong thing, and is rightly called "crony capitalism".

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

#155

Post by teod »

vonmoltke wrote: post #85
turtlebits wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once cars are autonomous, it makes it drastically simpler to carpool/rideshare or even pick up and drop off riders that may share the same or partial route as you. Also if your car is able to drop you off, it can be a shared resource when you don't need it.

I want to reply to all three of you (turtlebits, maxerickson, teod) with basically the same points. I'll put it here because yours is currently the top-ranked reply, but I am going to address all three of you. > Once cars are autonomous, it makes it drastically simpler to carpool/rideshare or even pick up and drop off riders that may share the same or partial route as you. I don't see how it is drastically simpler. Y…

Sorry, I think I may have misunderstood your original question. When you mentioned shared cars, I was imagining a fleet of autonomous, on-demand cars but not one that would pick up other people during your transit. Essentially I'm imagining Uber without the driver. Depending on how it's implemented, self-driving cars won't need sleep and they won't care where they go.

Maybe you're right and currently self-driving cars doesn't offer much more than the current human-driven cars; however, I don't think sociological barriers come into play as much in this scenario (beside the general concept of a self-driving car).

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

#156

Post by beat »

edc117 wrote: post #62
kazinator wrote: post #15

Americans could rather use a robot highway driving instructor. "Consider moving over to the right line; you're driving at the speed limit, and a speeding car is approaching; you may confirm this in the rear-view mirror." "I have detected that you came to a full stop at the end of a generous freeway entrance ramp in light traffic. Suggested future action: look over the shoulder as early as possible and match the speed…

I agree completely, but the very first thing they'd do would be figure out how to turn it off or muffle it. Bad drivers are not the type to take feedback well or let things like the rules get in the way.

Yeah... the same people who resent seat belt laws, because they're afraid of being trapped in the car after an accident, and feel much safer being thrown through the windshield so they can get up and walk away.

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

#157

Post by beat »

mikeash wrote: post #72
Alupis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are very, very good at handling unknown complex situations. In order for any AI to handle any situation, it must first be programmed to do so. If that situation was an unknown, you get undefined behavior. Undefined behavior in a car traveling down the road is not a good thing to place a bet on... especially your life. This is why majority of sane driverless vehicle talk has concluded a human driver must always…

Humans are mostly terrible at handling unknown complex situations on the road. For many human drivers on the roads right now, the response to a sudden weird situation is either going to be "brake heavily" or "swerve dangerously." You don't have to get "undefined behavior" in response to an unknown situation. The AI can simply default to braking to a stop in the absence of any better programmed alternative. This will…

Remember the two second rule? Instantaneous response would be a huge improvement in many situations already.

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

#158

Post by vkou »

knodi123 wrote: post #120
melling wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throw in 90-100 mph driving speed and we have a great way to travel. There"s no reason we can't have higher speeds on highways with only self-driving vehicles?

I don't think there's a reason we couldn't , but as far as shouldn't , efficiency losses from air drag increase proportional to speed. Same reason we don't have any 100mph submarines.

Drag actually increases proportionately to your speed cubed.

So, a vehicle travelling at 120 mph would waste ~8 times more energy overcoming air resistance, compared to one travelling at 60 mph.

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

#159

Post by kazinator »

superuser2 wrote: post #142
kazinator wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to cut in, gaining an advantage over traffic, it behooves you to keep your intent undisclosed. Some drivers in the advantaged lane will make it difficult to merge if they see the intent, by closing the gaps. (Those who make it easy are enablers of cutting-in behavior, despised by everyone). It's safer if you don't announce your intent; you don't want to be encouraging the driver in the target lane to be t…

This is fucking ridiculous. Surely all drivers have to change lanes at some point to get where they're going; why do they all actively attempt to thwart other drivers from getting into the lanes they need?

That's the competitive reality of driving in congested, urban areas.

Drivers who cut in can save a lot of time over the course of a commute. They disrupt traffic flows and delay everyone else. So efficient traffic flows have to be defended.

> Surely all drivers have to change lanes at some point to get where they're going;

Yes, and some drivers like, for instance, to pass around 25 other cars who are making the same merge.

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

#160

Post by ghaff »

JonFish85 wrote: post #147
dsmithatx wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was stupid for this article to start talking about the $4 billion Obama has talked about for research. This article is about features and not a real self driving car. If anything the features make this car very dangerous in the hands of people concerned with their phones and tablets and kind of proves the need for investments like the $4 billion. To me it sounds like the free market is about to make the road damn…

In cases like these, if a collision occurs, who is at fault? Presumably it is the "driver", especially in this case, right? But if/when this gets into the court system, when do people start going after the "self-driving" manufacturers, who have much, much deeper pockets than your average car owner.

Especially if people start arguing that the manufacturers are effectively going "pay full attention at all times. Nudge. Nudge. Wink. Wink." knowing that people routinely don't pay attention when automated systems like these are used.
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