[duahncjak]

I don’t believe we should think of this person’s profession as a safety driver. We should think of them as a fall guy.

It’s not reasonable for a human to sit around for hours doing absolutely nothing, then suddenly be thrust into an emergency with seconds to respond without warning. Most humans aren’t capable of that level of vigilance. If they aren’t watching a video, they’ll be daydreaming. It’s very unlikely they will be able to recover from any kind of situation requiring an immediate response. At a system design level, by placing a human in that role you have already failed.

Maybe if you take the most qualified humans with the best reaction times, they would have a chance, but the qualifications for that job would be more like those of a fighter pilot. This job is not recruiting our best and brightest, it’s recruiting people who want to sit around doing nothing.

This person’s role in the system isn’t to provide safety - it’s to absorb liability. Ergo, a fall guy.