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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

#241

Post by kazinator »

elif wrote: post #197
superuser2 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't think it's about time or efficiency at all. I think it has to do with perceived fairness and our self-righteous culture. The faster-moving disappearing lane gets an inherent advantage, which could have been renounced by merging too early. People feel cheated. The problem is that, objectively, people merging all over the place creates more traffic than a uniform zipper merge so we all suffer. In reality, the l…

> at least in GA where I live [...] the person merging has priority [...] anyone in an existing lane when a lane disappears is legally required to yield.

That sounds so crazy and contrary to everywhere I've been in the civilized world that I refuse to believe it (as you have written it) without some chapter and verse citation from the GA traffic code.

If it is literally true, it means that in GA, I can drive down a merge ramp and not even look at what is coming down the freeway; they have to hit their brakes or swerve to adjust to what I'm doing. I'm in a merge lane, which ends, and thus I have priority over anyone in an existing lane that isn't ending!

Any special rules about making it mandatory to let merging vehicles in have to be somehow crafted to they only apply to the obvious situations that they are intended for.

Or they have to apply in special places where signage clearly indicates that two flows are merging such that neither has the right of way. For instance the "Form 1 Lane" traffic sign or whatever. "Form 1 lane" effectively means both lanes are ending, and a new one is starting with equal priority access.

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

#242

Post by other_herbert »

niccaluim wrote: post #141
akamaka wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you put it that way, it's really interesting to think of it as a language shift rather than just a question of marketing honesty. If the average person describes the car he already owns as "self-driving", perhaps that will accelerate acceptance of real driverless cars.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if these are the same people who call the picture on their desktop their "screensaver."

That and calling a forward slash a backslash....

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

#243

Post by avs733 »

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.

This, unsurprisingly, has generally been the death of previous attempts at automated cars, especially when the efforts included modified roads and attempts to have cars form convoys to cut down on air resistance. [1]

[1] Granted, this is anecdotal, but it comes from a former faculty member who taught my control systems course in college. Last I heard he was working on systems for auto landing UAVs on aircraft carriers. He had worked on a number of grants related to autonomous driving and said that every time they had something technologically ready the lawyers basically couldn't find a way to make it happen.

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

#244

Post by tgb »

acveilleux wrote: post #37
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?

Emissions would be a problem (until Tesla takes over the world.) The energy required to sustain 90-100mph is mostly a factor of aerodynamics. If the distance between the cars could be kept sufficiently short like perhaps a few inches only then maybe. High-speed trains have flush coupling between the streamlines cars to deal with that. The incremental resistance from length is almost negligible and so they can maintai…

Actually a couple feet of separation is sufficient to get significant drafting aerodynamics going on. See, for example, the distance that bikers can draft behind a truck, or cyclists slipstreaming in the Tour de France, or drivers in Nascar or birds flying in a V.

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

#245

Post by userbinator »

ben1040 wrote: post #27

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…

the system will disengage and tell you to steer manually

Does it make a sound like this when it disengages?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XxEFFX586k

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

#246

Post by brandon272 »

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…

> 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."

Or a combination of both, potentially causing the tires to slip and the car to leave the roadway!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSE3fkeHAmo

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

#247

Post by prawn »

justinlardinois wrote: post #153
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 articl…

Even with politics (and by extension, war). The opposition will be routinely pitching stories to counter whoever is in power.

A huge percentage of stories are pitched by PR companies. I once shared office space with a PR company and saw how much it happened; it's eye-opening. The story in the careers lift-out of the paper - pitched as a profile for a new CEO of their client. The article about working from home, pitched to get a mention for the new consultancy client.

I would say that crime stories might be some of the only ones unaffected. But even then, the stories about crime statistics can be pitched - the giveaway will be a quote from security screen manufacturers or an industry rep.

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

#248

Post by webXL »

muhfuhkuh wrote: post #80
prostoalex wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It's just another one of the pile of vitriol against electric vehicles. Day after day, whenever someone mentions Tesla or Prius Plug-ins or the Nissan Leaf or whatever, it seems to kick in a auto-response of "what is the ROI of electric vehicles? You'll have to drive a million miles to get your investment back!" (as if buying a new non-exotic car is any kind of financial instrument). They also always talk about how m…

I'm not paid and I don't want the status quo, but until we shift electricity production away from coal, there is absolutely no reason to subsidize these cars.

The linked article never mentioned investment. It just highlights to utterly stupid one-size-fits-all legislation that cause automakers to produce cars they otherwise wouldn't produce. How about just raising the tax on gas if you want less gas produced???

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

#249

Post by webXL »

prostoalex wrote: post #108
muhfuhkuh wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just another one of the pile of vitriol against electric vehicles. Day after day, whenever someone mentions Tesla or Prius Plug-ins or the Nissan Leaf or whatever, it seems to kick in a auto-response of "what is the ROI of electric vehicles? You'll have to drive a million miles to get your investment back!" (as if buying a new non-exotic car is any kind of financial instrument). They also always talk about how m…

I am not particularly opposed to their argument (crony capitalism is evil, after all) but their omission of decades of handouts to fossil-based businesses, as well as variety of present-day deductions crafted specifically for those industries makes the argument hypocritical or incomplete, to say the least.

Many of those "handouts" are legitimate tax breaks that all manufacturing companies receive, even Apple and Microsoft, only oil companies get capped at 6% on their section 199 [1] where everyone else gets 9%

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/04/25/the-surp...

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

#250

Post by cynix »

vvanders wrote: post #201
MBCook wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that with cars that offer 'full stop' cruise control the driver must press a button to indicate that they're ready to roll again after the car has stopped it's self (or perhaps tap the gas). Not positive, that what I remember hearing. That way it's still the driver's responsibility, but it's easy enough that it doesn't annoy the driver.

Tesla's doesn't. At least not 99% of the time(occasionally I'll get a hold message but most of the time it just resumes).

The Model S now only requires human intervention if it has detected obstacles (e.g. pedestrians) while stopped, otherwise it should be able to resume automatically.
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