Re: Not an "autopilot"
"They're not pretending to drive the car for you, but objectively improves safety."
But that's the issue - they ARE "pretending" to drive the car for you. Take the example (here in the UK) where a driver was taken to court because he engaged "AutoPilot" on a motorway (freeway for you chaps across the pond) and climbed into the passenger seat to read a book! That (very stupid) man felt comfortable enough to actually do that - where do you think he got that sense of security from? If you are driving a "manual" car (even with ABS/traction/cruise control etc), you need to do something continually - at the very least steer. If you didn't, you would drive straight off the first bend in the road!
And the safety systems are questionable too. I know someone who has a car with "auto braking" for avoiding low speed crashes and cruise control which keeps speed/distance to the car in front automatically. It works well, until the sensor at the front of the car gets the slightest bit of dirt on it. 5 or 6 squashed mosquitoes and the whole system fails!
The future looks like a place where drivers won't know how to drive or control the vehicle, but will have the responsibility to do so when things go wrong.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
