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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

#281

Post by mikeash »

webXL wrote: post #249
prostoalex wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

And many of them are subtle but gigantic subsidies, like allowing them and their customers to poison the population without consequence, not even paying for the damages.

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

#282

Post by [deleted] »

eru wrote: post #274
jhulla wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only solution out of this paradox with respect to carbon fuels is taxation. Unfortunately, as much as we'd like, a global carbon tax regime is not practical, nor enforceable. So we're stuck.

Doesn't need to be global. European countries (and others) had high taxes on petrol for a while now. Extending that to a general carbon tax might be workable.

[deleted]

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

#283

Post by [deleted] »

eru wrote: post #274
jhulla wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only solution out of this paradox with respect to carbon fuels is taxation. Unfortunately, as much as we'd like, a global carbon tax regime is not practical, nor enforceable. So we're stuck.

Doesn't need to be global. European countries (and others) had high taxes on petrol for a while now. Extending that to a general carbon tax might be workable.

[deleted]

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

#284

Post by obsurveyor »

beat wrote: post #157
mikeash wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With today's aggressive and impatient drivers, the 2 second rule is very hard to maintain because they'll just pass you and fill the spot, every time.

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

#285

Post by ekpyrotic »

This is a interesting proposition for Honda, but really not that new. Even the price is not /that/ new.

In fact, this is technology that has been sold at around the same price point in the industrial transportation sector -- think of logistics and lorries -- for quite a while. This is where the majority of the innovation is taking place.

For example, just this week it has been revealed that the UK Govt will likely to announcing tomorrow funding for driverless truck convoys in the North of England. What's the price differential between these intelligent trucks and regular trucks? $0.

In fact, so much innovation is taking place in the industrial sector that just last week Toyota announced that it has hired the FULL workforce of Jaybridge Robotics, a firm that specializes in autonomous industrial vehicles, mainly in the agricultural sector.

If you want to understand the tailwinds in the sector, follow the b2b and industrial segment of the market. Technologies and trends are already starting to filter down.

--

I also want to plug my email newsletter Driverless Weekly (http://driverlessweekly.com) while I'm at it. It's a once-weekly summary of the top news stories in the autonomous vehicles sector.

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

#286

Post by Grishnakh »

MBCook wrote: post #191
Grishnakh wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the parent was talking about restarting from a full stop, it looks to me like he was saying that his car's radar-cruise system won't actually stop the car in heavy traffic, so if you're not paying attention and don't brake manually in time, you could rear-end someone.

Honda's system cuts out at some 'slow' speed like 35mph. If you don't do anything the car should fully stop but that's because you'll trigger the automatic emergency breaking. The problem with the system is it's relatively simplistic. You set a following distance (there are 4 options) and the car will never get closer to the car in front of you than you've specified. It will slow down as necessary to maintain that di…

Wow, I'm glad I didn't get a Honda and pay a premium for such a system. I got a Mazda3 instead, and the radar cruise control in that is excellent. I cruise all the time at 30mph in it (I work at a facility where I have to drive a couple miles at that speed to get to my building), around turns even. It'll come to a complete stop if the person in front of me stops.

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

#287

Post by mikeash »

obsurveyor wrote: post #284
beat wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

With today's aggressive and impatient drivers, the 2 second rule is very hard to maintain because they'll just pass you and fill the spot, every time.

I see this stated a lot, but I think it's exaggerated. My car's adaptive cruise control follows at about 2.5 seconds when on the maximum setting, which is where I almost always keep it, including in heavy traffic. People do occasionally jump in, but then the car just backs off a bit and starts following the new car at 2.5 seconds. It's not a constant churn, and it doesn't cause any significant delay. And this is in the DC area, with dense traffic and ridiculous drivers.

When people say that it doesn't work, I really think they're just saying that they can't stand having other people get ahead by breaking the rules, and they'd rather drive more dangerously than let that happen.

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

#288

Post by brianwawok »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #237
brianwawok wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWD is actually not that important in safe driving. AWD ensures you can always go forward. In a bad situation you don't care about going forward, you care about stopping and steering. So brakes and tires matter. We all have 4 wheel brakes, so set there. Get some awesome snow tires and 2WD and you will steer/stop fine in the snow. Plow up a hill through snowbanks? Maybe not.

AWD assures you always have traction, tracking means steering, therefore AWD means you retain steering in bad conditions. If you move to a snowy area the majority of vehicles have either AWD or 4WD, the few that don't NEED snow tires just to make it work. AWD used to be questionable because of the price and fuel economy, but these days thanks to computer controls, it is close to 1 MpG, and the price has come down to…

> AWD assures you always have traction, tracking means steering, therefore AWD means you retain steering in bad conditions. If you move to a snowy area the majority of vehicles have either AWD or 4WD, the few that don't NEED snow tires just to make it work.

I have lived my entire life in areas where it snows. This is fundamentally not true.

Traction has to do with tires. Good snow tires - awesome traction. Bald summer tires - bad traction. If you need to steer around something, the tires is what matter - NOT AWD or 4WD.

The reason the majority of cars up north have AWD or 4WD is because people are sheep, and believe in marketing material over facts.

If you would like to read more about this, please check out: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/12/01/all-wheel-drive-do...

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

#289

Post by Domenic_S »

saiya-jin wrote: post #272
Domenic_S wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (since traditional cruse controls don't) of course they do, where are you getting that?

traditional cruise control is just about keeping constant speed, no adaption to situation, road inclination etc. my 12 year old BMW has one, wonderful feature and keeps me still engaged with what's on the road

Traditional cruise control will most definitely hit the brakes. Set a speed and then drive down a nice grade, you'll see it in action. The oldest vehicle I've seen this in was a 1989 Dodge Caravan, you could literally watch the brake pedal move.

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

#290

Post by TrevorJ »

Nutmog wrote: post #255
TrevorJ wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The car will always be better at driving than the human. I don't think this is true yet. We can interpret the incoming data incredibly well in ways the machine vision can't yet match. This is absolutely vital for driving. The difference between an empty trash bag in the road and a toddler in the road is a matter of vital importance, and correctly identifying the difference matters a lot. Humans area actually capable…

I wouldn't say the difference matters a lot. Instead humans and computers would just have different thresholds for when to stop and when to run over something. If a computer is less accurate at distinguishing them, then it'll simply err on the side of caution more often than a human. You would find there are more inconvenient stops, not that more more babies get killed. I'm sure I've stopped for empty trash bags befo…

This assumes that in every situation coming to a controlled stop is an option. That is almost certainly not the case. Many times the choice is between running (an object) over or making some kind of risky maneuver to avoid it.
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