"Parallel Autonomy" or Guardian Angel Technology

“In parallel autonomy, there is a guardian angel or driver’s education teacher,” Dr. Pratt said. “It usually does nothing, unless you are about to do something dumb.”

Before joining Toyota, Dr. Pratt served as a Darpa program manager. Beginning in 2012, he oversaw a “Grand Challenge” contest there to design semiautonomous mobile robots capable of performing useful tasks in disaster areas where humans would be at risk, such as the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster.

The contest was won earlier this year by a South Korean-designed robot that performed a series of tasks like driving, walking, opening doors, using power tools and climbing stairs. Twenty-three teams participated in the contest. However, it provided a striking contrast to science fiction movie portrayals of robots as superhuman machines that operate with agility, dexterity and speed.

During the contest, the robots exhibited little autonomy, moved glacially and often fell while doing tasks that are routinely performed by human toddlers.

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Toyota to Finance $50 Million 'Intelligent' Car Project

Most people (at least in this world era, don't want to give up driving entirely. So, putting what people want first (mainly to not be in car accidents and being maimed or dying first) I think Toyota has a winning combination here.

 But, there will also always be a market for the non-drivers who are often from cities or who have DUIs that need to get to work or home or whatever who will want what Google and Tesla are coming up with regarding completely driverless cars.

However, at least in this world era most people still want the joy of driving unless they are in a traffic jam and instead want to surf the internet, do some work or watch Netflix or something like that instead of driving through a long traffic nightmare.