What I mean by this is you cannot count on Automated driving doing exactly what you want it to. As a result people who are less coordinated likely are winding up in accidents more and more simply because their assessment of their car's or trucks automated driving skills is not appropriate regarding their actual safety.
In fact in 2022 My wife and I bought an Ascent by Subaru that has automatic driving capabilities. However, we didn't find it very safe especially on the freeways between here and Lake Louise Canada (here being the San Francisco Area).
My wife was freaking out a lot because I'm more of a risk taker than she is. Finally after several thousand miles of driving over 5 weeks I realized that it wasn't useful when passing big trucks to have the automatic driving button engaged because it would fight me and want to drive closer to the semis than I felt comfortable doing.
So, my solution was when the highway was clear enough of obstacles I might have it on but not when passing large semis or other larger trucks which take up most of their lane.
The problem is that the Automated driving goes back and forth left and right in your lane. It's sort of designed that way I guess. But, if it is going right towards a semi which is already taking up most all of it's lane then in a wind or any kind of normal situation it just isn't really safe to do that. So, my solution eventually was just every time we got within 50 or 100 feet of passing a semi or other larger truck that takes up all or most of it's lane I would simply turn off the automatic driving feature until I got passed that truck or trucks. In this way I found it was safe enough to use when not passing big trucks on the freeway.
And I found it relieves a lot of pressure driving because if you have the automatic cruise control on which has automatic breaking combined with automatic steering this can work great over long distances as long as there isn't a lot of traffic.
The problem would be if people don't have as good a set of reflexes as I do or who don't really understand what the technology is or isn't capable of and cannot integrate that knowledge in a safe way into their driving skills then accidents are likely to occur for these people, especially if they are talking to other people in person or on their phone or otherwise distracted.
So, I expect to see a whole lot of accidents regarding people overestimating their skills combined with automated driving along the way.
However, the automatic Braking feature combined with Cruise Control is the Bees Knees and is worth having especially on long trips because you can basically take your feet off the pedals completely for long periods of time because it is braking for you in the cruise control mode if you are above 20 mph or so (25 for many cars but 20 mph in our Ascent.
Later: Also, one of the main reasons besides global Climate change and flooded vehicles that insurance rates are rising an average of 20% in a year or two is people using Automated Driving when they don't know what they are doing and aren't integrating in a useful way what automatic Driving actually is.
If you think it's something that it's not then you might be dead sort of like in the comedy "Anchorman 2" where one of them thinks Cruise control can drive the motor home without supervision and it goes off the road and crashes in slow motion during the movie.
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