Interfacing with your cars automatic driving technology

I wouldn't recommend this for everyone but for me the right state of mind interfacing with the automatic cruise control (which will keep your car at a set speed whether you are going uphill or downhill including automatic braking) with automatic steering (that I use only when appropriate) can lessen the strain of driving long distance a lot.

When do i find this the most helpful?

Strangely enough, I find it the most helpful during extreme traffic jams where I put it in automatic cruise control and automatic steering and it will drive all the time in traffic jams quite well (unless you have to change lanes when you have to take full control of your vehicle.

I find I can look out the window more (when it's safe to do this) during a traffic jam and enjoy the scenery.

But, you always have to be on top of it because especially the automatic steering can pop off for any reason at any time( a bump in the road, too tight a corner for the system to be happy, or for things you have no idea at any time).

So, I deal with all this sort of like I had my 5 year old child in my lap steering for me. You constantly have to be supervising your vehicle because it isn't safe to let it completely drive itself ever. So, if you were not there the system would eventually make a mistake and crash the car whether you were in it or not.

Some people get stressed out doing this but I find because of my technical background this works for me as long as I'm supervising all this every moment as it is happening.

So, I arrive at my destination much more rested (maybe 50% more rested) than I would feel if I had to do everything (braking gas pedal and steering) the whole way during this long trip.

So, like for example I drove about 80% to 90% of the time with my vehicle driving itself mostly with me supervising and felt very rested at the end of the trip relatively speaking 9 hours later.

So, the most valuable for me was getting stuck in two hours of traffic going from Casa de Fruta to Santa Nella. So, instead of taking me 6 or 7 hours to get to MT. Shasta it took us about 9 hours to get there instead. (which would have been really bad for me and my wife because I'm 77 and she is almost 70. So, automatic Driving can help you keep your health too if you have the right configuration of skills present for you to feel safe enough to do this at all.

Each car is different these days. For example, my older daughters 2017 Forrester has only automatic Cruise control with automatic braking and that's all.

However, our 2022 Ascent has automatic Steering too and so I first learned to use it on our long drive in June of 2022 to Tetons and Glacier National Park and then up to Banff and Lake Louise in Canada which was around a 5000 mile trip by the time we got back home to California after coming down through Seattle and Portland on our way back to California.

So, each person has to make their own way forward and my older daughter and I are the only ones in my family who feel comfortable using automatic driving and the rest have tried it but don't like it.

So, to each his or her own.