Your driver-assist system may be out of alignment... with your understanding of how it works

There is no good substitute for human competence. All these electronic nannies exist because too many drivers do not take the task seriously, have unsafe habit patterns and are not paying attention to their surroundings. Licensing standards are too weak in most nations and thus drivers are granted a drivers license who do not begin to know what to do if the car hydroplanes on wet pavement, starts to skid on an icy road or you experience a blowout. All of this can be taught but most driving schools do not teach this and most drivers are uninterested to learn. As long as they can start the car and more or less aim it down the road to the mall, all is well.

Heck, I turned off auto-high beams because I didn't trust them not to blind another driver. This tech is not for me.

Buckle up!

Where I am today, every other driver is on their phone

Driver-assist systems will be rendered impotent as long as drivers are distracted by their STUPID(not smart)phones...

Airplanes still have pilots who are always on alert. Who could possibly think millions of cars driven by drunk or high people, etc will ever be anything even close to that anytime soon?

Instead of buying a brand new Transit Connect van I ended up having to buy a used one to avoid the automatic braking feature. I really do not want a car applying the brakes without warning. I don't trust the algorithms not to misinterpret a pile of snow in the middle of the lane between the tire tracks, say a big pile of snow that slid off the roof of the car in front of me (happens all the time) as an "obstacle", apply the brakes and force me to use skid avoidance maneuvers in a van that I cannot make the brakes release on.

Airplanes still have pilots who are always on alert. Who could possibly think millions of cars driven by drunk or high people, etc will ever be anything even close to that anytime soon?

Go drive in Germany. Getting a drivers license there requires weeks of serious training and is expensive. It is not the gimmie it is in most countries. The Germans are the most disciplined and predictable drivers I have ever shared the road with.

Airplanes still have pilots who are always on alert. Who could possibly think millions of cars driven by drunk or high people, etc will ever be anything even close to that anytime soon?

Which is why the idea of affordable flying cars scares me.

I drive a VW T-ROC. It has all the bells and whistles. But for the life of me I have never been able to learn how to use the "park assist". Once I took my eye of the road for a moment (my bad) in heavy but slow moving traffic and the car in front of me stopped. My auto brakes came on with enough noise to wake the dead, but prevented me hitting the car ahead. So I'm good with the auto breaking.

This could have been a subject for NPR's Car Talk (Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers).