[vesak]

Well, as many futurologists say... a self-driving car (or drive-assisting) doesn't have to be perfect. It merely needs to be better than a human driver. Data seems to suggest that that hurdle isn't that high.

Then again, I do share your concern about hackability. Just a single grand catastrophe would turn the scales over for a long time. And nothing suggests that car software is of high quality currently.

>Do you drive while text messaging

Amazingly many people do, even after being told that it's about as dangerous as driving drunk.

[siffland]

I have said this before. Auto manufacturers are not the greatest at security. Jeep was not exactly receptive to fixing its hacked vehicles until it was exposed at blackhat. I agree, someone is going to do something simple like hack whatever main system is talking to all the cars and do something simple like tell all of them to accelerate and that is their last order.

Can we all trust the car companies to do their due diligence and have all their software audited. Do we trust their proprietary algorithms?

At least when i am driving myself i know what is going on in my head. Yes it might sound a little conceded, but who do you really trust.

Also as a side mark (to get me downvoted :) ), i can understand automatic braking and some of the other things, but if you need the machine just to help maintain your lane for you...you probably should not be driving (i seriously work with someone who praises their car for helping them not drift out of their lane).

[wtallis]

> but if you need the machine just to help maintain your lane for you...you probably should not be driving

This is not actually an argument against putting lane keeping assist functionality into cars. Yes, distracted driving is bad. But there's no way to completely prevent it, so the auto industry should do everything they can to mitigate the harm.

[siffland]

A five point racing harness is more secure. And a roll cage will help in rollovers. Not mandatory either, but would mitigate a lot of harm. There are a lot of other things they can do as well.

If you hold peoples hands on stuff they start slacking, they become dependent and cannot do something without assistance. My kid plays a FPS online on his xbox one, he started off doing ok and getting better. He found out you can turn on aim assist and got really good. If he turns off the aim assistance, he is worse than he ever was.

I am not disagreeing with you that lane assist, now that is exists, might not be useful. I just feel we are moving to a world like the people on the ship in the movie Wall-e.