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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 win
by Negative1 11y ago
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).