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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."
Well, not quite- nice to see that Honda could come out with an ADAS system barely a month after it becoming legal....
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Is this some kind of euro-test?
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Does this make anyone else think of the old Looney Toons cartoons where one character diverts another character's path of travel by painting a false line from the middle of the road to someplace else?
Okay, now I'm just confused
Lenny: Hey look, Homer's got one of those robot cars!
*Crash*
Carl: Yeah, one of those American robot cars...
Aibo kept getting us lost when I was too drunk to drive.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Unfortunately, as self driving cars become more and more viable, we're going to run into a liability problem. Sure, the self driving cars can probably cut crashes and resulting deaths by some huge percent, but there will still be some that happen. Then, those crashes and deaths will be the responsibility of the car manufacturer who will get sued into oblivion.
Jerry
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Yes, we drive carriages on the road, in exactly the same way that you drive highs
down your highways, while ensuring that you keep your frees onto the freeway.
A dual carriageway is a road which is not a motorway which has a physical divider
(ie not just a white line painted on the road) between vehicles heading in different
directions. A single carriageway is a road which just has the white line.
There are different regulations and speed limits on the two. Unless told other wise
you can travel at 70 down a dual carriageway, but only 60 down a single. (Actually,
it also depends on the kind of vehicle--minibus can only go 50 on a single, 60 on a dual).
Phil
Then don't use the system! Devices that make it easier for drivers to not pay attention to what they're doing need to make sure that safety is addressed. The car won't beep if you don't turn the system on, or if you buy a car without it. I would want to know, if I'm not actively controlling the car, that the computer is working at doing that job and that the impression of being under control isn't false.
Similarly, aircraft have indicators that let the pilots know that the autopilot is in control and what mode the autopilot is in. It's kind of important to know for sure that a vehicle that can and will kill you if it crashes is under control by either a human or an automation system.
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I think the constant beeping will interfere with the telephone call I'm on.
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I'm redminded of the movie The 6th Day (starring the Governator), where in one scene Ahnold and whoever was co-starring were sitting in a truck, looking at each other and talking while the car drove. When they got close to their destination, the car beeped and informed them that it would be returning to manual in 10... 9...
The car also had built in GPS with maps, and seemed to be able to drive itself anywhere, though not from the exact beginning to the exact end (it relied on humans for such things as parking.)
Does this new Honda have any of this? Being able to have the car hold your position is helpful, especially because it will allow you to pay greater attention to other driving matters, such as cars surrounding you and judging your next turn off (though, at least in America, it will just allow Soccer Mom's to apply more make-up, sigh.)
Can the Honda steer around cars that are going too slow? Say it's set to a +/-10 mile variance; if a car in front of you is going 10 miles slower than you want to go (or the speed limit allows, depending on how its set up), will the car automatically work around it? What if a car is coming up behind you too fast; will it move over to let the other car pass?
Can it navigate itself off of highways? We already have GPS-enabled systems that inform you when a turn or exit is coming up that you need to take; how well could they integrate that into the car steering itself?
What happens if the road lines dissappear or become unreadable, be it from construction or wear? Does it hold a straight course, alerting you right away? Does it slow down? Or is it looking far enough ahead that it would have enough time to alert you to resume manual control?
Does it merely watch the road, or does it calculate the shape? What if a car changes lanes in front of you, blocking the camera from seeing the lines, and right after the road goes straight after being a curve? What will the car do? Will it have enough data to know the road it about to straighten?
I love the idea of a car driving itself, if only because that means less asshats on the road (their car, unmodded, will certainly respect road rules and common decency, even if its owner doesn't.) However, there are a lot of questions I have before I feel safe driving in one of these. Also, I'm sure someone will figure out within a month how to clip something onto the steering wheel to make it think that someone is touching it. (Or, the stupid parents will just tell their kid in the passenger to reach over and touch the steering wheel, while said stupid parent goes on talking on a cell or grroming his/herself or whatever.)
And heaven help us if it runs Windows.
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.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Finally, SOMEONE is driving when I'm on the phone.
If liability issues kill the implementation of self-driving cars, then it's time to kill all the lawyers.
Personally, I would much rather have a robot driving a car than a teenager. Or an old person. Or a drunk. Or somebody on a cellphone. Or me, when I'm daydreaming, frankly. Who hasn't experienced that thing where you jerk alert and suddenly realize some part of your brain you're not even aware of has been driving for the last 45 minutes - on the freeway, at 75 mph - while the rest of your head has been somewhere else?
There will still be wrecks, but I think we'll have fewer of 'em. I'll take my chances with the robots.
Really, one HUGE problem in this country is that nobody understands risk assessment. It's the kind of ignorance that gave us the completely ineffective PATRIOT Act in response to 9/11.
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