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

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

#261

Post by wolframarnold »

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.

This is why Google canned the whole idea of requiring a human to be alert and ready to take over. They want to get rid of the steering wheel and pedals, because they found in their extensive road testing that their own employees just didn't pay as much attention as they wanted them to.

This is still facing regulatory hurdles, obviously.

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

#263

Post by Dylan16807 »

SixSigma wrote: post #258
eru wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, and efficiency saves lives in and off itself. (One possible path, using less oil for cars, we can use more oil instead of coal in other applications. Thus mining less coal. Coal mines are crazy dangerous per Joule mined comparatively.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox In economics, the Jevons paradox occurs when technological progress increases the efficiency with which a resource is used but the rate of consumption of that resource rises because of increasing demand.

That doesn't stop it from pushing coal out a bit.

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

#265

Post by toomanybeersies »

noir_lord wrote: post #165
jmiserez wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget "hacker": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(term)#Hacker_definitio...

and my favourite "coder" I'm not a coder, I'm a programmer, I lack the lumberjack shirt, skinny jeans and macbook.

Related to terminology of what people who write computer programs call themselves:

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...

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

#266

Post by Reason077 »

Animats wrote: post #166
mikeash wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's sad that it doesn't handle heavy traffic well. That should be where it does best . Tesla's system, for example, is nice on the open road but absolutely wonderful in heavy traffic. Too bad about not handling full stops, too. I wonder if that's a technical limitation, or if it's just something they didn't want to allow.

Restarting from a full stop requires good pedestrian awareness. In city traffic, there might be people crossing in front of the car when it's stopped. Restart also requires getting the driver back on line. They're probably on a phone. That's why some driver input to start motion is desirable. The user interface problems for automatic driving are very tough.

Restarting from a full stop requires good pedestrian awareness.

Cars that accelerate automatically from a stop already have the radar/ultrasonic sensors necessary for collision avoidance. So they should never accelerate into a pedestrian (and not allow you to, either!).

If anything, collision avoidance systems have better pedestrian/cyclist awareness than human drivers do, since they can "see" objects in blind spots, etc.

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

#267

Post by [deleted] »

kazinator wrote: post #241
elif wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

[deleted]

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

#268

Post by Yaggo »

tizzdogg wrote: post #257
plg wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this sounds horribly unsafe. You are lulled into this state where you don't have to pay attention to steering UNLESS you have to pay attention to steering, and you will find this out suddenly. So if you always have to pay attention, even when the system is active, then what exactly is the point of the system in the first place? Wouldn't it be safer to always pay attention? I guess this is an empirical question.…

I was once in an accident caused by the driver using cruise control. My driver had his feet relaxed and off the pedals when a car swerved in front of us.. he reacted by going to hit the brakes and because his feet were not in a position where he knew the relative position of the pedals, he hit the accelerator instead of the brake. We swerved off the highway down an embankment at 75-80mph. We were all very lucky to be…

When driving with cruise control, I have a habit to lightly touch the brake pedal once in a while (without actually braking) to "warm up" my muscle memory for emergency situation.

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

#269

Post by saiya-jin »

ghaff wrote: post #124
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 all fairness, the assistive driving features introduced to date are probably a net win. (After all, they've been available on high-end vehicles.) However, we're probably approaching the point where the automation is sufficient that people will routinely stop paying attention given that it "mostly works" for highway driving in good weather.

"mostly works" can get you eventually killed on a highway

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

#270

Post by saiya-jin »

henrikschroder wrote: post #228
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Autopilot was nifty but it wasn't until I slogged through ~40 minutes of rush hour without touching the pedals or wheel when I realized how awesome it really was. Which car can do this?

High-end Mercedes/BMW/Audi/Lexus have had these features for years now, although they still force you to keep your hands on the wheel, presumably for liability issues. (And it's still awesome, it makes stop-and-go traffic bearable)

having to keep hands on the wheel vs not touching it at all (as vvanders wrote) shows how much trust car manufacturers have in their systems
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