New Honda Accord Drives Itself

pmenefee writes "Japanese car manufacturer Honda has launched a new self-driven car. Dubbed Honda Accord ADAS, the vehicle can change gears and steer itself around bends. While the auto-pilot function will currently only operate on motorways and dual carriageways, officials at Honda believe that future ADAS models will tackle all roads."

Comments

Re:What's a dual-carriagway?

[east coast]

Why is this modded as troll? I swear to God, some people are pretty thin skinned.

I've often heard that the first step to wisdom is calling things by their correct name; if this bloke needs some clarification and isn't too proud to admit it should he be marked a troll? He's a hell of a lot better off than the idiots who think they know what it means when they don't.

Scary Scary World

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

I really don't think the future is in self driven cars.

While science fiction, and apparently car companies, suggest that this is a possibility, here are two reasons why this will never happen:

1) All or Nothing. Either ALL cars on the road are self driven, or none are. The moment you get a human interacting with computer driven cars, all chaos will result. No computer system, radar system, and automated response system can anticipate a drunk human driver swerving across 6 lanes of traffic at 100 mph in order to make an exit.

2) Too many degrees of freedom. The car has too many degrees of freedom that affect safety. Tire wear, engine wear, body wear, road conditions, weather conditions and unexpected obstacles like rocks, tree branches, other debris, animals, or other people act against the safe driving of a vehicle. A computer can't take all these degrees of freedom into account. An auto driven car with lousy tires, paired with poor weather and icy roads won't be able to swerve in time to avoid a deer that suddenly dashes out on the road. A human might see the deer emerging from the woods long before it dashes out on the road, a human knows what to do when seeing a deer approach the road. A computer might interpret the deer as a stationary obstacle on the side of the road and take no precautions like slowing down to avoid hitting it if it suddenly moves.

Auto driven cars only work in a few carefully controlled conditions, not in real life. Perhaps an automated highway system is the only application for automated cars, one that prevents external influence like weather and animals and other humans, but it would require billions in infrastructure changes to make highways safe and usable as automated freeways.

The concept just isn't practical. I for one will stop driving if I had to use or contend with computer driven vehicles. While humans are infinitely capable of bad driving, knowing I can react to whatever some brain dead human driver can throw at me makes me feel safe as opposed to allowing a computer to decide how to react to unexpected (and unprogrammed for) conditions.

Re:Sweet!

[Tony Hoyle]

The #1 problem with drunk driving is being able to react to hazards in a timely manner.

Staying in lane is easy. Realizing that the truck in the junction ahead hasn't made eye contact and is about to pull out in front of you is harder.. and you can't automate that.

Re:Do I have to say it?

[TFloore]

There will still be wrecks, but I think we'll have fewer of 'em. I'll take my chances with the robots.

I agree that a computer doesn't get distracted or tired. It does require proper maintenance, but then so do your brakes.

We are in the unfortunate time right now, where the systems are only useful under limited real-world conditions, basically in good weather on highways with no construction. That's still a big chunk of driving miles, and I'd love to be able to use something like this while I'm doing highway driving in good weather on interstates with no construction. (There must be a couple of miles of interstate not under construction somewhere near here... right?) And this system, due to using radar for speed control, is probably safe for night driving too. That's really cool.

But right now, the systems are good for "closed track" driving with other well-behaved cars. It doesn't know street signs, so handling the 4-way Stop intersection would be a bit of a problem. Ditto with traffic lights. Give it another 10 years, and those will become solved problems too.

Then you have to be able to handle kids running into the road in front of you when the ball rolls down the driveway. That's harder.

I'm not bashing these things. I like them. I want them. Really... I drive a Ford F-150, and when Ford did a recall on the old-tech cruise control, I found just how much I use the cruise control as a crutch. They disabled my cruise control for 4 months, while they worked on fixing the problem and distributing parts to the service centers. Try driving 400 miles without cruise control sometime, it's amazing how tired my leg got, just keeping steady pressure on the gas pedal for 7 hours. Ouch.

But these things are still at a point that they require an alert attentive driver watching things. Just like... regular cruise control. Wow. When a car on normal cruise control plows into another vehicle, that is the driver's fault, not the car maker's (assuming that the cruise control did not refuse to disengage). If one of these new-tech cruise controls does the same thing... that is still the driver's fault, and not the car maker's.

But I'm sure a jury would still be happy to award a "Oh, we feel bad for you" award of a few tens of millions of dollars to the family of the first person killed by one of these.