OT Self driving cars

[RB211]

Traded in our crappy Kia Sedona minivan and got a 2019 Honda Odyssey EX-L.
Being a tech nerd, made sure it had all the safety addons, or "Honda Sense". It has a forward looking camera that does a host of functions.
Bottom line is that I can drive down the highway and the car will steer itself to stay in the lane. It has adaptive cruise control and will stay a set number of seconds behind the car in front, and warns you if you drift out of your lane.
I can purchase the OpenPilot autopilot for increased functionality, but the car does 95% of what I wished for. Also got the extended warranty, all this fancy crap can break and it won't cost me anything extra to fix for the life I plan to keep it.
Unfortunately my co-workers are calling me, "Captain soccer mom" Guess I was supposed to buy a Tesla or Porsche instead.

[A.K. Boomer]

Danlb will be proud of you - if he can still read by now, i think last someone heard he was wearing diapers...

[reggie_obe]

Living in Florida, did you order the optional Octogenarian early-warning and collision avoidance system?

[J Tiers]

Danlb will be proud of you - if he can still read by now, i think last someone heard he was wearing diapers...

Living in Florida, did you order the optional Octogenarian early-warning and collision avoidance system?

Damn.... that's just plain nasty, guys.

[A.K. Boomer]

Damn.... that's just plain nasty, guys.

Depends how your looking at it - the guy's an absolute visionary with inadvertently figuring out a way around the toilet paper crisis...

[danlb]

Congrats on the purchase. As noted in another thread, It's really nice to have those features. It looks like the Honda Sensing is similar to the Toyota sense package. As noted in my thread on the subject of PHEV cars, I really like the features. One of the drawbacks you may encounter is that it's easy to get used to the lane keeper. But since it's vision based, it can be blinded by glare from the sun near the horizon. It sucks to have those rare occasions where you can't clearly see the lines and your car can't either.

The Toyota version includes the optional Octogenarian early-warning and collision avoidance system. When a person with a cane starts to cross your path while you are moving, the car will tell you to brake, then it will brake for you if collision is eminent. When on adaptive cruise control, it will slow down when a person has their blinker on for more than a minute and finally serves into the lane ahead of you with inches to spare. It will not, however, help them to properly operate a voting machine. That's a much needed upgrade, IMHO.

Dan

[RB211]

Yes, it will slam the brakes, but I haven't tested that feature yet. It displays a symbol when it senses the lines, and beeps and removes the symbol when it doesn't. It also jiggles the wheel when you get too close to the lines.
I wanted all these features because I wanted to try out Open Pilot, and only cars that have those features, are compatible. However, the Honda Sense is good enough, don't think I even want to bother with it. Toyota's work better with it than Honda, as Toyota has more torque on the steering wheel to take tighter curves at slower speeds. Next car is going to be a Toyota Tundra, to replace the Prius.

[darryl]

As an 'septo-don't wanna be but am' I still don't want any of this stuff in my vehicle. My friends dad is the opposite- it's his best friend. He's well over 80, so perhaps that time has come for him to let the vehicle do the driving, even though he's still behind the wheel. Maybe that time will come for me also, but for now please let me have a vehicle that isn't an expensive repair nightmare.

[lugnut]

In 2018 I least a 50th Anniversary Subaru Legacy with all the cool safety features. Keeps you between the lines, adaptive cruise control, pre collision braking, side rear motion censers, blind spot warning, a bunch of others. We really like all the functions and I know they will help you from a collision. BUT my old 2001 Chevy Blazer doesn't have any of those and I have to remember which outfit I'm driving. A person can get a little complacent with all those features.

[danlb]

Darryl, you mentioned a fear of buying a vehicle that is an expensive repair nightmare. You should be relieved to learn that just because it has drive by wire and a hybrid / electric drive train does not equate to "expensive" nor "nightmare" when it comes to repairs. I had a 2002 Prius for 17 years and it had two maintenance issues that cost over $900. One was a ECU that was replaced "just in case" it was causing a code and the other was the big battery when two cells cracked and began to leak. The total repairs in 17 years and 170K miles years were $899 and $2300. That's no worse than my kids spent on their car and much better than what my mom spent on her caddy.

[darryl]

Well I guess it's all relative. Back in the day, 150$ was out of my league to repair a transmission, so I did it myself. Starters, alternators, wheel bearings- whatever went wrong I could fix it myself. In later years, $1400 was a lot of money to fix the fuel injection system, so I did that myself too.

Recently the starter went on my car. For a while I couldn't find the starter- but then I did, tucked up there under the fuel injection system. I'm starting to lose control over being able to keep a vehicle running without having to pay shop rates- for a shop to guess at what's wrong, while I pay for everything they replace until they find what's actually wrong. I recently had a shop guy tell me about vehicle repairs- 'everything is $600 or more these days'. I just paid a shop $86 for a half hours work, swap some tires. Subtract the taxes, and I paid $150 an hour-

Am I just getting cranky in my 'old' age? I'm about to go buy some ice cream- please tell me how much that will cost so I can freak out at home before I go

[J Tiers]

As for assist stuff, the Ranger has a collision avoidance deal, if it thinks you are going to hit something, it lights up a row of "you gonna die" red lights across the dash in front of you, and makes a loud noise. I think that if you do nothing, it will eventually set the brakes, but I have not let it get that far. In my opinion, it will let you hit whatever it sees, but will probably slow you down a bit before impact.

It did nothing for many situations that I thought it should have, but has actually gone off.

Each time it has gone off, my foot was already hitting the brake pedal, other than a couple cases. It surprised me several of those times enough that I almost took my foot OFF the brake, as an involuntary reaction.

The two times I was NOT hitting the brake were times I was driving on a local street that has an abrupt change of direction to the right at the exit from an intersection. The result of that is that if you are in the left lane at least, you have the green, and you go through, you are driving directly at any car that is in the left turn lane for the opposite direction, the two opposing lanes are separated by only 3 feet of concrete median, with a sign or two on it.

That puts you in what obviously looks like a collision situation, but actually is not. It is a bit distracting to have the dash light up red and scream at you like that. But it is strictly rule-based, and so it does what it has to.

There is nothing else of the sort on the truck, the driver has to drive it, and knows that. I prefer it that way for the moment, I am so far not impressed with the extreme optimism the SD car folks have shown. But now I am beginning to see that they have lost that, and seem to realize that driving might be a leetle more complex than they thought. I see a LOT of road conditions that I believe they might possibly not have pre-programmed into the computers.

[danlb]

I feel for you Darryl. I hate that everything has been designed to make them easy to manufacture and expensive to work on.
The saving grace on my little Prius was that it needed no work for most of it's life, so the expensive repairs were not a major problem.

[J Tiers]

I feel for you Darryl. I hate that everything has been designed to make them easy to manufacture and expensive to work on.
The saving grace on my little Prius was that it needed no work for most of it's life, so the expensive repairs were not a major problem.

That's a Japanese car.

US cars can be very different. As can certain Japanese cars, of course. But when you say "American car", you kinda really mean "chinese car", with lots of parts made by the lowest bidder in china. And many of those are the expensive and specialized electronic parts, which will be in short supply if there are any problems, because they are not made here, and there are no facilities for making them here.

Puts a different face on it.

Somewhat like a "harbor freight" car, or "Grizzly" car. Not quite that bad yet, but getting there.

[A.K. Boomer]

Yeah it is sad Darryl, everything is going that way and it's getting really pathetic to participate in the madness,

anyone have the pleasure of replacing one of those "stretch belts" yet? no idler pulley adjustment - your staring at an 09 subaru forester AC compressor looking for a way they pivot it on it's mount or something to adjust the belt yet all you see are solid mounts and it's just the compressor pulley and the engine pulley, no other pulley, how is this possible your asking yourself ? oh it's some kind of rubber band belt that you have to buy special tools to derail it off and back onto the pulley systems - what a bunch of idiots, and there right in front of you is the casting they used to use for the idler pulley adjustment, just blanked out holes but not tapped,,, saved allot of money there A-holes, so gone are the days where you just throw in a few tools and spare belts for your road trip as "oops" forgot the special tools needed to change the belt....

I don't bow down to car manufacturers idiocy, for all who own PilesOS like this just install the belt with the compressor disconnected - then install rear compressor bolt then place a 2X4 under the pulley connected to your floor jack, jack up and pivot tension belt then install all other compressor bolts, although this will not help you on the side of the highway it's at least something you can do at home to get things going long enough to sell the POS... yeah sorry I didn't purchase the incredibly expensive subaru tool from you guys --- _icks... - pound sand....

same vehicle - bent valves due to them not knowing how to design a non-interference engine - icing on the cake is it looks like honda's V-tec designs patent might have ran out or something because now subie's engaging their rockers with slide pins in the same manner - well kinda, the entire layout looks like some kinda Rube Goldberg design and leaves one scratching their head as to how it actually all holds together just at idle let alone redline,,,
not only that --- now it hangs the rockers out even further so it's actually impossible to get the valve covers off to do simple valve adjustments and gasket replacement and the like - now the motor mounts have to be un-done and the engine lifted and then "pried over to one side" to clear the frame... then repeat for the other side, what a bunch of crap....