
Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use - davidst
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/a-20-000-self-driving-vehicle-hits-the-road-1457913797-lMyQjAxMTE2MDE3NDUxMDQzWj
======
ben1040
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 and keep a safe following distance,
keeping either the maximum cruise control speed you've set, or whatever speed
the vehicle ahead of you is driving, whichever is slower. It will accelerate
or brake accordingly. It will also attempt to stay in the lane by using the
onboard cameras for tracking the lane markings.

The lane keeping assist is not nearly as autonomous as the article makes it
out to be. It does not like to work on sharper curves on the freeway, for one
-- the system will disengage and tell you to steer manually. It still wants
you to keep your hands on the wheel. It must be looking for very very subtle
movements on the wheel, because the system will yell at you if you take your
hands off the wheel for longer than 10-15 seconds.

All in all it's a pretty cool feature for longer road trips (keeping in your
lane can just get kind of tiring, even with cruise control) but it's not the
sort of autonomous driving that the article here paints it out to be.

~~~
jklowden
Free-market ideology if you ask me. The first sentence suggests the hapless
government wants to spent $4 billion on research for something you you can
have today for $20K. A little later it mentions Washington's "time and
billions" spent on fuel-efficiency instead of "saving lives". The government
has also funded electric-car research and encouraged Detroit to build them.
Contrasting self-driving with electric drive is just another way to suggest
the dead hand of bureaucracy is impeding the invisible hand of the market.

By the way, the government has saved drivers' lives, too, by the thousands,
more often than not over industry objection. Seat belts, unleaded fuel,
crumple zones: it's a long list. The article's bias isn't just bias; it slants
away from the facts.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
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.

~~~
justinlardinois
> 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 article to the
author. Perhaps Honda has more to do with this article's bent than the WSJ
editors.

~~~
threeseed
> But it's otherwise known for quality, more-or-less objective journalism

Sorry but no. Ever since Murdoch took over and replaced the editors the
quality has noticeably dropped with a lot more inherent bias even in the non-
editorial content.

And within the editorial section the change is pretty clear. It's shifted from
being centrist to at times being on the hard right.

------
kazinator
Americans could rather use a robot highway driving instructor.

"Consider moving over to the right line; you're driving at the speed limit,
and a speeding car is approaching; you may confirm this in the rear-view
mirror."

"I have detected that you came to a full stop at the end of a generous freeway
entrance ramp in light traffic. Suggested future action: look over the
shoulder as early as possible and match the speed of the traffic."

"Suddenly exiting out of the left lane is dangerous. Please know which exit
you're supposed to take, watch for its approach early, and change lanes ahead
of time. If you miss an exit, do not make a sudden, dangerous action. Look for
an alternate route or U-turn starting at the next exit."

~~~
prostoalex
From personal experience a lot of people would benefit from Blinker Usage 101.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Poor blinker usage drives me nuts.

Yes, there are some cases where, well, stuff happens. A driver forgets until
the last minute. Many times I see them hit the blinker a split second _after_
they've changed lanes.

But far more frequently, I see the driver who is drifting between lanes at
will, without thinking of the blinker, and seemingly without a care in the
world. This is disturbing, especially since if I'm seeing the behavior, I'm
behind the driver. That means it's my job to figure out where the winds will
blow them next.

Too many times I see idiots posting on Facebook or texting as I pass. Many
times this is when we're both doing 65mph or more. Insane stuff.

This isn't full auto driving, but every little step helps.

~~~
kazinator
If you want to cut in, gaining an advantage over traffic, it behooves you to
keep your intent undisclosed. Some drivers in the advantaged lane will make it
difficult to merge if they see the intent, by closing the gaps. (Those who
make it easy are enablers of cutting-in behavior, despised by everyone).

It's safer if you don't announce your intent; you don't want to be encouraging
the driver in the target lane to be trying to close the gap that you're
swinging into.

In most other normal situations, blink, damn it!

~~~
superuser2
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?

~~~
kazinator
That's the competitive reality of driving in congested, urban areas.

Drivers who cut in can save a lot of time over the course of a commute. They
disrupt traffic flows and delay everyone else. So efficient traffic flows have
to be defended.

> _Surely all drivers have to change lanes at some point to get where they 're
> going; _

Yes, and some drivers like, for instance, to pass around 25 other cars who are
making the _same_ merge.

~~~
elif
The problem is that traffic engineers disagree with your assessment of
efficiency. You are effectively using aggressive driving (a crime) in order to
circumvent actual laws (yield to mergers) and to self-righteously defend the
worldview that you have constructed in order to provide a superficially
logically consistent explanation for your emotional frustration about losing
out.

~~~
kazinator
> _traffic engineers disagree with your assessment of efficiency._

Do they?

> _You are effectively using aggressive driving_

Not me, personally. (I ride a bicycle and use transit from time to time, and
the occasional rental car on weekends and holidays: out of the vicious rush-
hour traffic.)

Fact is, if you throw a blinker, there will be those drivers who will reduce
gaps and not let you in. Usually not in merge situations (as in, you can't
join this freeway, bugger off!) but situations in where the lane change is not
necessary (you're not _entitled_ to swerve into this lane just because it's
moving faster!). I agree with them; they are doing the right thing. It can
usually be done safely, within the "two second rule" for following another
vehicle, depending on speed. Be it right or wrong, safe or unsafe, if you want
to outwit those who are doing it, you have to do the wrong thing an not blink.

Not letting people join a freeway is despicable. (It happens too: "Hey, you
_can_ merge here ... just not in front of me, thank you very much!") The do-
not-blink principle does not apply there, because it's obvious that you want
to merge whether you blink or not, being in a merging lane and all! My
comments don't apply to that situation at all.

~~~
elif
I'm not sure I'm understanding your position very well. Are you saying that
people exiting the slow lanes to enter the "moving lane" constitutes a hazard,
and by punishing those actors by not letting them in, you are minimizing that
hazard? If so, i'm inclined to agree philosophically.

However, I don't believe anyone should impose their philosophy with 2 tons of
steel.

RE: traffic science, here are some references [http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-
Drive-What-Says-About/dp/03072...](http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-
Says-About/dp/0307277194/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458019698)
[http://www.edmunds.com/driving-tips/car-merging-
psychology-d...](http://www.edmunds.com/driving-tips/car-merging-psychology-
dont-hate-the-sidezoomer.html)

------
Someone1234
Just for comparison, you can get a Subaru Legacy Premium with Eyesight for
$25,835 (or a Crosstrek for thereabouts, and an Outback for $2-3K more), since
at least summer 2015. So nothing Honda are doing here is revolutionary
technologically, they're just bringing the same technology to a new market
($5K cheaper), which is still something.

I highly recommend that if you invest in THIS technology that you go all in
and get the blind spot detection and rear cross traffic alerts. I have had a
Subaru with Eyesight for over six months now, and I don't regret buying it and
definitely like the blind spot/cross traffic alerts, they're legitimately
useful day to day.

I will say one downside of this system is what I call "alert fatigue"
particularly lane drift warnings, ice warnings, traffic pulled away warnings,
etc. You can disable many of these, but it would be my only whine.

I have had automatic braking pre-warn me a handful of times, but not had it
activate yet except when I pulled into the garage and the dangling tennis ball
confused it and even then it only slowed me slightly. You get a yellow warning
then red, then brake, and most of the warnings are legitimate I am just ahead
of them.

Lane keep assist and distance based cruise control are like crack. It feels
like you just get on the freeway, push a few buttons, and the car almost
drives itself.

~~~
BrandonY
I also really enjoy my Subaru EyeSight. I've only run into one terrible
experience, and that is when I went into a automated car wash. As soon as the
first big scrubby thing approached, the EyeSight flipped out and slammed on
the brake, which was jolting and scary. Kind of obvious looking back on it, of
course, and now I remember to turn it off when I wash my car.

~~~
fudged71
You're supposed to turn off your car when you're in a car wash, so I'm not
exactly sure that this was the car's fault :)

~~~
sithadmin
Perhaps for one where you are stationary...but I've never seen a tunnel wash
that advised anything other than placing one's vehicle in Neutral.

------
mikeash
The article really wants to compare with electric vehicles, for some reason.
The subheading says "they are being snapped up faster than electrified
vehicles." This is repeated in the article, which says the relevant options
packages "are being snapped up at a far higher rate than electrified
vehicles." Discussing the Q50's technology package and how many buyers opt for
it, it says "That’s three times as many people who pay extra to buy a hybrid-
electric version."

What's the deal? Is this just because Tesla happens to be the one with the
best system at the moment? It doesn't make any sense to me, and really
distracts from the article's main thrust.

~~~
prostoalex
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...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/voters-should-be-mad-at-electric-
cars-1457737805)

~~~
muhfuhkuh
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 many fossil fuels it takes to
manufacture (or even charge) the electric vehicle, ignoring the fact that it
not only takes the same amount to make the ICE car but it still has to run
_directly_ on fossil fuels. When all of these arguments are refuted, the last
argument is always about how cars sound better with gas engines and the rumble
and other appeals to manliness or whatever rubbish.

There is a very large contingent that wants the status quo and either hires
astroturfers outright to spread FUD, or influences opposition via media/ad
buys. The rest opposed to electric are just old-school fuddy-duddies and the
kids they've managed to influence. And, I've seen these arguments play out on
everywhere from car specialist forums, YouTube comment sections on Teslas
racing ICE cars, to right here on Hacker News when talking about electric
cars.

~~~
prostoalex
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.

~~~
webXL
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...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/04/25/the-surprising-
reason-that-oil-subsidies-persist-even-liberals-love-them/#62a686a41e86)

~~~
mikeash
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.

------
TrevorJ
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.

~~~
adekok
Normal desktop failure modes don't work well here.

"Hi, this is your car. I've discovered that the road is icy, and am currently
in the middle of a 360. Would you like to (a) take over, (b) call an
ambulance, or (c) retry?"

Too late! You've crashed.

~~~
mchahn
> and am currently in the middle of a 360.

You have no faith in AI. The car will always be better at driving than the
human. It would be much better at handling a 360 than a human ever could.
Actually humans are very bad at handling 360s unless you are a pro.

~~~
Alupis
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 be in the driver seat, ready to take control. There's an
impossible volume of failure modes a driverless car must contend with,
everything from someone pointing an infrared laser at the distance sensors, to
complete power failure, to a sudden rockslide, a bird darting in front of the
car, lines missing from a windy and hilly road, etc.

In normal, daily mundane driving - driverless cars are expected to excel.
Sitting in traffic is mind numbing, and mistakes happen when driver's minds
wonder. In "active" driving situations, a human brain will almost always
excel.

~~~
mikeash
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 already put it on par with most
drivers. Better, in fact, because the AI can begin braking instantly.

I personally find that the majority of driverless vehicle talk vastly
overestimates the average human driver, and demands unreasonable perfection
from the computers.

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

~~~
obsurveyor
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.

~~~
mikeash
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.

------
stcredzero
In the early 2000's, I was hanging out sometimes in western North Carolina,
and there was this young woman who has in the habit of getting together with
some friends and driving around the clock to get to Colorado and back on short
trips, instead of flying. I'm wondering if this technology isn't going to be
used for such purposes.

~~~
nostromo
If I could get in my car, read a bit and fall asleep, and wake up in Las Vegas
from San Francisco, I'd prefer it over flying every time.

But this has more to do with how air travel has become miserable than anything
else.

~~~
tdicola
You can do this with buses today.

~~~
dwiel
Actually, with buses today, it will take almost twice as long (14 hours) and
require between 3-5 transfers [1]. In a car there are no transfers and it
takes 8.5 hrs [2].

[1]
[https://www.google.com/maps/dir/San+Francisco,+CA/Las+Vegas,...](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/San+Francisco,+CA/Las+Vegas,+NV/@35.8840442,-121.0218591,7z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x80859a6d00690021:0x4a501367f076adff!2m2!1d-122.4194155!2d37.7749295!1m5!1m1!1s0x80beb782a4f57dd1:0x3accd5e6d5b379a3!2m2!1d-115.1398296!2d36.1699412!3e3)
[2]
[https://www.google.com/maps/dir/San+Francisco,+CA/Las+Vegas,...](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/San+Francisco,+CA/Las+Vegas,+NV/@35.8840442,-121.0218591,7z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x80859a6d00690021:0x4a501367f076adff!2m2!1d-122.4194155!2d37.7749295!1m5!1m1!1s0x80beb782a4f57dd1:0x3accd5e6d5b379a3!2m2!1d-115.1398296!2d36.1699412!3e3)

------
CoffeeDregs
Conversations about self-driving have focused on zero defect rate in-city
self-driving vehicles, but a lot of these technologies are reaching Pareto-
efficient levels of usefulness. I don't need my car to drive the first and
last miles; I'd be perfectly happy if it just drove on the highway.

And why do humans drive long haul trucks for anything other than the first and
last miles? Trucks should drive themselves between depots at the edges of
metros and then humans can drive them into the city. [https://www.mercedes-
benz.com/en/mercedes-benz/innovation/th...](https://www.mercedes-
benz.com/en/mercedes-benz/innovation/the-long-haul-truck-of-the-future/) "Self
steering"... How long before that moniker is replaced by "Self driving".

And why are humans delivering packages? They might not be for long:
[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-starship-delivery-robot-
id...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-starship-delivery-robot-
idUSKBN0U30ES20151220)

It's going to shock our economy once industries begin constraining roles to
the level at which robots can be "good enough". After figuring out how to
manage them, we'll start to see robots deployed in force.

As parents, my wife and I are talking about this a lot as we think about how
to raise our kids (and we are emphatically hands-off parents)...

~~~
beat
Even fully automated, trucks have much longer response times in dangerous
situations. The fatal accidents would be inevitable, and the legal response
vicious. Never mind that automated trucks would probably be less likely
overall to be in an accident.

------
bliti
The elephant in the room is this one:

When will highways be upgraded/updated for self driving? I don't mean V2I
(vehicle to infrastructure) capabilities, but properly painted _and_
maintained lane lines, reflectors, and signage. The infrastructure is just not
there. You can't simply rely on a car's sensing abilities for self driving.

~~~
chiph
That $4bn could go a fair way towards developing a longer-lasting highway
paint, then restriping the interstates with it.

~~~
bliti
I think the current paint is OK, it just needs to be serviced. It might be a
good idea to include the V2I sensors in the paint itself due to its thickness
(I've measured the lane lines locally and they are about 10mm thick). But the
basic maintenance is key. This is a bureaucratic problem due to how
infrastructure maintenance is used as a political tool (politicians in power
usually advertise how public works generate _n_ jobs). The problem here is not
the actual tech, but the politics. The tech will eventually get there. The
politics? Good luck with that...

------
raz32dust
Am I missing something? Why is this top news? There are several cars out there
with adaptive cruise control. In fact, I think most mainstream cars offer it
as an option now. It's pretty impressive but calling it "self-driving" is
hyperbole.

Subaru's eyesight is technically even more impressive considering it does
image processing to detect vehicles, whereas most of these systems are based
on radar. Although I don't see the point because radar is more reliable IMO.
Unless you use some features which only camera can provide (stop at traffic
lights?), which Subaru doesn't yet do. From whatever research I did before
buying a car, Volvo's system (uses both radar and camera) seems to be one of
the best overall, along with Mercedes, and Subaru being a close third.

------
ipsin
I'm curious about whether this is going to be a net win or lose for safety.

If users treat these automated cruise systems as a "magic self-driving device"
when it can potentially make mistakes or hand back control when it's confused,
drivers are going to die.

If people "really want to look at their cell phones", and they take this as
the tool that lets them pay no attention to the road, it better be up to that
task.

------
Negative1
The title is a bit misleading. I have a 2016 Civic Touring that has the
Sensing Package. It's effectively a sensor package (cameras in the top-middle
of the windshield and below passenger-side headlight) with integration with
the steering and powertrain systems and very basic logic.

When you turn it on the car basically tries to stay in your lane by looking at
the lines on the road. It actually tells you when it can and cannot see the
lines. When it detects you going outside of the lane (without using your
signal) it takes control of steering and corrects for you. You can also set it
to stay within some distance of the car in front of you and it will control
your speed. Supposedly, it will also auto-brake if you are in danger of
collision but I haven't had a chance to test that yet (and hope not to have
to).

The whole thing is more like a driver assistance system and if you take your
hands off the wheel for more than 15 seconds or so a bunch of alerts start
going off and the system disengages. After using it for a few months I think
this is probably a good idea. There are quite a few places in the SF Bay area
that have worn out and faded lines on the road and once the system loses sight
of the lane markers it just stops working. Not a great moment to have your
hands off the wheel or your eyes closed. ;-)

For the price its incredible that Honda offers something like this. Suburu
offers something similar but the next best thing is buying a Tesla for much
more. I treat it sort of as insurance on long trips. If I start dozing off or
am distracted the system keeps me in check but it is not reliable enough to be
truly autonomous. So yeah, it can sort of drive autonomously.

As a preview of the future it gives me hope and it's possible this may be the
last car I actually buy (when cars drive themselves it could very well become
a service industry).

------
bliti
This is an expansion on cruise control capabilities and not self-driving. Its
a step up, of course. But not what the title may make you think.

------
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](http://driverlessweekly.com)) while I'm at it.
It's a once-weekly summary of the top news stories in the autonomous vehicles
sector.

------
bengoodger
I've owned three cars with automatic cruise control for the past decade. This
isn't exactly new technology, perhaps only at this price point.

The first car I had with this, an '06 Infiniti, was only able to slow to a
crawl, not a full stop. So while it was useful on the highway it was useless
in stop and start.

The second car, a '11 BMW, added "Stop & Go" to the formula. Great? Not quite.
What would happen is that the car would come to a full stop, and then a timer
would run, and if the car didn't start moving again within 10 seconds the
cruise control would shut off, and to resume you'd have to push the pedal.
This was especially maddening when stop & start traffic is inconsistent and
the stops last 10.5 seconds. Basically the idea of being able to set & forget
was completely undermined by this and driving with the feature on was more
stressful than driving with it off and just doing everything manually. A
complete bust. I don't know why it does this but I can see it being some
combination of the product team needing to ship the feature in the state it
was in, and legal requirements.

The problem with both of these implementations is that they promised to
alleviate some of the issues with past "auto-drive" features (and you should
consider Cruise Control to be the very first auto drive feature), but
introduce their own. If you want the user experience of set & forget, you need
very predictable conditions if you want any of these mass market systems to
work for you, and unfortunately that's just not the way the roads are.

I think I have the feature in my latest car too, but I've given up and decided
to enjoy manually driving, and just wait for fully autonomous vehicles.

------
usrusr
How do we as drivers keep up with the rising levels of automation? It's
challenging but doable for owners, but imagine jumping from a pain old 1990s
car into a flashy new rental with all the bells and whistles... With a bit of
exaggeration, one might make a case for individual type rating, like airliner
pilots need to have.

Before we reach fully autonomous driving, we might see an age of widespread
"car illiteracy", with more and more people who have a driver's license, but
who have completely lost touch with the state of the art in car UI concepts.
With not enough time on automatic transmission, people here in Europe
occasionally even struggle with something as simple as
park/neutral/reverse/drive (don't ask my where I got that)

------
dsmithatx
Sounds like these cars are far from self driving. Just some added safety
features that resemble self driving but, are dangerous to use without a foot
near the break and hands on the wheel.

I think this sentence pretty much says it all, "For instance, some owners have
posted videos of hands- and foot-free driving on YouTube and the car
inevitably makes a mistake.".

It sounds like these features are going to end up being abused and probably
causing serious fatalities. As we have seen people want to txt and even watch
movies while driving. These new features will allow wreck less drivers to pay
less attention to driving and more attention to how many Instagram followers
they have.

I'll be sure to pay more attention to people driving Honda civics when I'm on
the highway.

------
yalogin
This looks like the same functionality the Tesla Model S has. One of the big
draws for the new Model S cars. So much so that people are getting rid of
their older Teslas because they did not have the autopilot.

I thought it's only a matter of time before autopilot becomes common place but
it looks like its happening sooner than I thought. The good thing is this has
nothing to do with the car being electric or not. But the main thing is, if
Tesla thought its going to be a differentiator in terms of calling their cars
"luxury" its going to be a problem for them. Given that the internals of the
Model S itself are not particularly luxorious they need to think about it.

------
jtouri
There was a startup that for $10,000 it was a third party option package that
was self driving. I wonder how it is doing with all these car companies that
create their own options for self-driving.

~~~
ph0rque
You mean the one just recently bought by one of the big car companies for
north of $1B? [http://fortune.com/2016/03/11/gm-buying-self-driving-tech-
st...](http://fortune.com/2016/03/11/gm-buying-self-driving-tech-startup-for-
more-than-1-billion/)

~~~
jtouri
Yeah I think that's the one! Wow good for them, I remember reading about them
last year, then after that I never really heard about them again.

------
girkyturkey
I have yet to drive a "self-driving" or even "self-monitoring" car and the
thought of doing so terrifies me. I know technology is good and it can do
great things, but helping me drive is something I don't enjoy the idea of.
What happens if, however unlikely, someone were to hack my car? They could
potentially crash my car and leave without a trace. I think we really need to
take a step back and ask if the benefits outweigh the potential costs/risks.

------
winter_blue
> The Obama administration has proposed spending $4 billion to accelerate
> autonomous-car technology during the next decade.

Hmm, what are they spending it on? There's a lot of money being spent on
developing this technology already by multiple private companies. I assume
it's for something else...

IMO government research money should go into stuff that private industry is
unwilling to fund, like pure math, theoretical physics/CS, and other things
that have very long-term yield/results timelines.

------
encoderer
It might take a while before self driving is widely available, but self
stopping is here today. It's now standard equipment in all new Mercedes --
including cars selling for about $30k. I have an entry-level Mercedes and it
includes blind spot radar, lane tracking, and collision avoidance that will
stop your car automatically if you're distracted or incapacitated. These
features are available widely from most automakers now.

------
sweetbabyjesus
Exciting title, disappointing marketing piece for Honda. WSJ has joined the
ranks of Forbes promoted content levels.

------
nashashmi
The conversation on this HN thread makes me wonder about the future generation
who will never learn how to drive.

And then I feel sorry for the generation in between who will be confused with
automatic driving happening only sometimes.

Such interruptive learning or even worse, never having learned, has the power
to change culture for the worst.

------
pnut
The impending dawn of the autonomous car era is the reason why I am not
marching on Washington for rail investment.

This is really one time where cynical cheapskate politics may hasten rapid,
positive societal change.

~~~
massysett
How does an autonomous car reduce the need for infrastructure investment? A
bunch of commuters in self-driving cars will clog the road just as much. Less
need for parking, maybe; less need for roads, no.

Maybe you could squeeze a bit more capacity out of freeways by running cars at
high speed at short following distances. But a lot of congestion occurs at
intersections and self-driving does little to solve that.

~~~
Bud
Not "maybe" less need for parking. Definitely, certainly less need for
parking. And remember that a lot of "road" surface is actually reserved for
parking and not actually available to drive on. Same thing for having to have
massive parking lots EVERYWHERE that people with cars might want to go; that
can potentially go away completely.

And if you need much much less parking, guess what you also need less of?
Parking meters. And parking tickets. Imagine a society without that pernicious
bullshit everywhere.

------
a_imho
the self driving car is a concept I have a hard time appreciating. It sounds
cool, and offers enormous technological and legislative obstacles to overcome,
yet I can't figure out the fundamental problem they will solve - compared to
the attention they get. For any use case I can imagine (minus the cool factor)
we either have more efficient solutions already, or there are better
alternatives to investigate. Plus I figure, most people still like to drive.

------
sandra_saltlake
I'm impressed, I'm much more relaxed than before - and that means I'm actually
able to just look ahead and think about the road, not about what I'm doing.

------
johnchristopher
Curiously I'd rather pay a premium for a car that can park itself flawlessly.
Or drive itself around town while I am busy doing things in said town.

------
spike021
If it's a much cheaper car than the alternatives, would the self-driving
capability be implemented with lower-quality hardware and/or software?

------
collyw
Is it legal to let these cars drive themselves?

~~~
ph0rque
Yes: [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-autos-
selfdriving...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-autos-selfdriving-
exclusive-idUSKCN0VJ00H)

~~~
notJim
That's referring to fully-autonomous cars. With systems like the one in this
article, the driver is still the human, not the car.

------
embro
Sadly there is no such thing as an electric Civic. I wish my 30K Nissan Leaf
had it.

------
Animats
From the article: _" as long as lane markings remain visible and another
vehicle is in front of the car."_ That's more like platooning, which was
demoed two decades ago in Demo 97 [1], than self-driving. Are there more
details about how this works, especially about autopilot disconnect and user
takeover? Tesla's system is known to have trouble with offramps.[2] (Tesla
customers are very forgiving. "It's a beta", one says in their forum.)

Honda's follow-the-leader system avoids some of Tesla's problems. Radar
systems for not rear-ending the car ahead are already pretty good, and many
are already on the road. Lane following by lane markings isn't that reliable,
but restricting it to following the car ahead handles traffic jams nicely
while locking out most of the hard cases.

The deployment of self-driving systems which are much dumber than Google's is
worrisome. I've written before of the "deadly valley" of automated driving.
This is another "deadly valley" system. The deadly valley begins where the
driver can take their hands off the wheel and tune out. It ends where the
automated system can correctly handle more situations than a human driver.

Google is trying hard to get to the far side of the deadly valley. That's
good. Look at the problems they're having. Their only known fender-bender in
autonomous mode was when the vehicle was trying to deal with a drain blocked
with sandbags and very slowly maneuvered around it, to be hit by a bus, while
in a wide lane at a right turn, because the AI misjudged the likely behavior
of the bus driver. Google's dealing with the hard edge cases. Cruise, on the
other hand, ran into a parked car in San Francisco when the autopilot lost
lane tracking, veered left, overcorrected right, and the driver took back
control too late. That's a more basic failure.

It also shows the problem with semi-autonomous systems. Expecting the driver
to compensate for failures of the automation will not work.

Volvo Car Group President and CEO Håkan Samuelsson says that the company will
accept full liability whenever one of its cars is in autonomous mode.[3] He
has it right. This needs to be a requirement before the "move fast and break
things" crowd gets on the road.

nonmarked-ramp [1]
[http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/.../pavements/...](http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/.../pavements/.../publicroads/97july/demo97.cfm)
[2] [https://forums.teslamotors.com/de_DE/forum/forums/careful-
wh...](https://forums.teslamotors.com/de_DE/forum/forums/careful-when-using-
autopilot-) [3] [http://fortune.com/2015/10/07/volvo-liability-self-
driving-c...](http://fortune.com/2015/10/07/volvo-liability-self-driving-
cars/)

~~~
tly
I agreed that there needs to be a system of accountability for both the driver
and manufacturer as well as proper marketing of said features. This article
and the misleading title could very well cause the same damage as directly
marketing the technology as a "magic all-in-one solution." Much as the
companies and supporters like to see automated driving pushed through
development and testing quickly, the public and private corporations needs to
realize that "breaking things" can involve fatal accidents.

~~~
Animats
Yes. Here's a really bad example of feature misunderstanding, a Volvo owner
demoing the self-braking, where it plows into some pedestrians.[1] "Volvo
spokesman Johan Larsson told Fusion the people in the video did not pay for
the car’s “pedestrian detection functionality."

The levels of self-driving may need to be standardized, so that when a driver
gets into a strange car, such as a rental, they know what to expect.

[1] [http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/self-braking-volvo-
fai...](http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/self-braking-volvo-fails-test-
drive-slams-onlookers-article-1.2238171)

------
ams6110
No thanks. Just something else to go wrong.

