It's close and it will happen. In my Tesla it already drives itself nearly 100% of the time through city streets, highways, rush hour traffic, complex situations (hardware 4 Teslas are amazing). I also have a Toyota truck and it feels like such a downgrade to drive without self driving anymore. It's only a matter of time before Tesla and others perfect self driving (as Waymo nearly has done) and we no longer have human driven taxis/ubers/lyfts and regular drivers are also on self driving. It will save time, lives and reduce road rage.
It doesn’t have to be completely unsupervised for the driver to realize huge improvements in quality of life. I don’t even notice when people drive slow or cut me off. I’m just relaxing, fiddling with the music or talking to my family. And managing two toddlers is a lot easier when my brain doesn’t have to run a constant background job.
I do hope that unsupervised comes soon though. The tech is there, or at least far enough that I consider it better than my own driving. The hurdle is regulatory now.
If you're distracted and not actively monitoring an SAE Level 2 autonomous system then you're a hazard to yourself and others. Don't do that. You need to be ready to actively intervene with zero advance notice.
You're technically correct of course, but the fact of the matter is every driver gets distracted/tired and having the FSD safety net only makes things safer, assuming you don't go out of your way to get distracted. I've lost count of the times I looked over at a "dumb" car being driven by someone on their phone. Would you rather that person be in a Tesla using FSD or in their Subaru Crosstrek?
So far I've been impressed enough with the HW4 Teslas that I haven't had them do anything that I had to intervene to correct or prevent. It's pretty amazing at how well it handles all kinds of things - construction, weird merges, road debris. This morning, there was a tire in the middle of the road, which caused traffic ahead of me to slam to a halt. Mine had to brake hard enough that ABS engaged, and then navigated around the tire. I was impressed.
It's not close at all. Not where it snows in winter. This union will last at least a decade. Waymo and Tesla claim to be coming for northern states but ice and snow tell a very different story. You simply can't go FSD in a snowstorm.
Was in a Waymo in south beach this week. Insanely impressive. Dealt with traffic, ride share drivers randomly blocking lanes, people/bikes/scooters dashing into the path and more. All went flawlessly. Rode in it for about an hour.