[drzaiusapelord]

Well, how about automatic transmissions? ABS? Traction control? Cars have had those things for decades and they're not a big deal.

A lot of newer cars have lane assist and other features. I think a half-way there approach works fine. The same way pilots have the option to use auto-land and auto-pilot.

[Ressuder]

I'm sure that if you read what I wrote again I wrote "not noticably automated" rather than "not automated", specifically for that reason. People don't know that it's there, it's just the way the car naturally handles for them.

Transmission is completely automated. You never have to handle anything that has to do with it.

ABS and TVS changes how the car functions all the time. You have no control over it whatsoever, and it never hands over control to you.

In other words, none of those contradicts anything I said, and I have no doubt that potentially more things like that will come. However, they will still fall under the same two categories: full automation or non-noticable automation.

[galdosdi]

You make a very good point that we've been making driving easier for a long time now.

But those things don't uniformly work fine, unless you ignore human factors. The big danger here is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation especially with regards to encouraging drivers to feel safe about not paying attention temporarily.

Things like ABS and traction control seem to work great in this light, providing a benefit at little cost -- because (unless they're goofing around on a track or parking lot or something) the driver rarely notices it outside of a rare emergency and thus cannot adjust their behavior to compensate.

Automatic transmissions, lane maintenance, cruise control, "tesla auto pilot mode" etc on the other hand clearly make the car feel easier to drive and harder to crash every moment they're being operated, and make the driving task less demanding of attention, providing plenty of opportunity for the driver to get used to the safety feature and start using it as a crutch that allows the driver to pay less attention. And inattention is the main cause of wrecks.

Even road features themselves often have this effect -- making things seem safer makes drivers actually driver more poorly, and vice versa. See for example http://www.accessmagazine.org/articles/fall-2012/slower-road...

Maybe these features save more lives than they doom, but it's certainly not a given, so as they are introduced they really need to be rigorously analyzed to ensure they have the hoped-for effect.