Honda sends first consumer Level 3 autonomous car into showrooms, but only to 100 lucky Japanese leasers Honda has started selling the first commercial passenger vehicle with level 3 autonomy - the ability to drive in many situations without human intervention, but with the expectation a human is always ready to take control. While the announcement of the new Legend sedan equipped with "SENSING Elite" technology does indeed …
I realise as an old fart that I will be accused of Ludditism but I actually enjoy driving, have driven hundreds of thousands of miles and still look forward to it.
My 1992 Landy has over 390000 kilometres on it, I like the proper hand brake it has and the manual gearbox and drive selection, it will go virtually anywhere (as opposed to going everywhere virtually) and I get to choose how it goes about getting there.
On the safety aspect, if autonomous vehicles are going to offer a huge increase in safety and a consequent drop in accidents, potetially to zero, where wil that leave the insurance companies?
Motor insurance will lose its raizon d'etre
@Chris G
You'll only be accused of being a Luddite by folks that haven't done their homework. The Luddites were not against new machinery - they were against specific new machinery that put them out of work. In fact, they used to break machines selectively, leaving intact those that didn't threaten their livelihood, even on the same factory floor.
BTW I once had an ex-army heavyweight 109, and I entirely concur with your comments. It even had a starting handle that I needed on occasion in bad weather in the wilds.
" if autonomous vehicles are going to offer a huge increase in safety and a consequent drop in accidents, potetially to zero, where wil that leave the insurance companies?"
Offering lower premiums and vastly jacking them up for luddites who insist on manual control
Insurance is a business based on actuary analysis, you'll still need insurance (if only because trees fall on parked cars and arguing that with a landowner's insurance company is best left to the lawyers) and they'll still make profits
As for the landy: There's a reason that Toyota ate their lunch and dinner in Australia/middle east. If you're in an environment where a breakdown can kill, you want a RELIABLE vehicle, not something with lucas electrics
where will that leave the insurance companies?
Wait, you mean we should keep using unsafe systems that cause accidents, maim and kill people, just so that insurance companies can keep making money?
I'll try to stay reasonably polite, and merely state that insurance companies can go fuck themselves.
The expectation that a human will be capable of taking control on demand effectively is fundamentally flawed. Reaction times from a state of inattention are drastically longer than from a state of attention, so there will be lots of occasions where there just won't be time to prevent an incident.
The partial inattention that leads to human drivers bumping into things is still a much more attentive state than that of an effective passenger suddenly asked to drive in an emergency. This is such a basic and proven fact it's amazing (and deeply worrying) that it has not yet sunk into the brains of the autonomaniacs.
"The expectation that a human will be capable of taking control on demand effectively is fundamentally flawed."
That's correct. And that's why Tesla's license to kill should be revoked.
But that's surely not what the Honda-jin are talking about here. As I understand it, this system is designed for traffic jams, and only works at low speeds (under 40kph?). There presumably aren't going to be any kids chasing balls in that environment although it'll presumably brake if one turns up. It's designed for "The road seems to be covered with some mysterious substance (might be water, or mud, or maybe snow, or perhaps lava. My program does not cover that. I need help .. situations)". Stopping and pulling over to the side if possible until humans take over seems the appropriate response. How well that works out in practice remains to be seen.
"And that's why Tesla's license to kill should be revoked."
Tesla's advanced driver assist cruise control is not automated driving. It's not even level 3 or 4
Germany prohibited them from calling it autopilot for the same reason (Who remembers the story of the Winnebago autopilot and why they renamed it? - hint, there's a tiny grain of truth in the Merv Grazinski story. which dates back to the 1970s and the behaviour of tesla drivers shows why it's an issue)
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They've been playing this "extra cost unless it's black" one for a year in the UK. And yes, that small a selection of extra cost option colours. Interesting though, my Honda has the first of those "main tricks", although it's of limited value in the real world. I think it's up to Level 2 in the Society of Automotive Engineers scale.
Well I don't like your "meat driver" phrase - too pejorative for me.
But you sort of have a point, if instead of spending billions on R&D, how about if the US would have opened up it's borders and let in thousands of people in who would no doubt be happy to have jobs as personal chauffeurs (aka Uber drivers ;) - two problems, one solution!
"Automated vehicles’ potential to save lives and reduce injuries is rooted in one critical and tragic fact: 94% of serious crashes are due to human error."
But simpler and cheaper things could be done as well, such as completely banning fast powerful heavy vehicles. Putting sensors in cars to monitor and restrict speeds to applicable speed limits and road conditions. Monitoring driver behaviour such as adherence to speed limits, rates of acceleration and deceleration etc and penalising aggressive (stupid) drivers either by removing their licences or perhaps limiting them to tiny low power plastic cars (poetic justice! :). And that's nowhere near a comprehensive list as to what could be done with modern tech. But of course that would be wildly unpopular and about as divisive as gun control. So the authorities hope to achieve similar ends surreptitiously via automated cars which we all know are cool and the future right?
Fun fact: If you look at the death rate for per 100m miles for automated cars, it's currently worse than the average for human controlled cars! Okay they're still testing but that testing has mainly been done on quiet roads. I bet initially when they're rolled out, automated car safety numbers will look a lot worse.
And one final point to consider; human drivers aren't as susceptible to being hacked!!
Yes but if there are no human drivers, there will be no crashes caused by human drivers, sheesh, I thought this was obvious.
I honestly do not understand what is "cool" about an autonomous car... I see no cool here, in fact I see mostly "uncool".
Also, humans have made the entire planet unsafe for every other living thing, I don't quite understand why human safety is so important in the first place, but, I do admit to a possibly severe case of misanthropic curmudgeon-itis.
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