The High-Stakes Race to Rid the World of Human Drivers
I just bought a 2016 Volkswagen that has laser cruise control and lane assist. I ordered the fully loaded package because the incremental cost was not large, and I figured I might as well have all the toys if I was going to the expense of buying a brand-new car.<p>I consider myself an enthusiast; I have a fair bit of time on the racetrack in lapping days and amateur races, sometimes I volunteer at car control clinics and teen instruction days. All of my cars have manual transmissions and I ride a motorcycle. I definitely did not expect to become dependent on any driving nannies.<p>What I&#x27;ve found is that it&#x27;s absolutely astounding how fast you come to trust the automated systems. In my car, the laser cruise control will drive the car for you at virtually any speed. It does a great job of keeping up in traffic, has no issues with hills or going around bends, it&#x27;s always able to track the car in front of me perfectly. It uses the brakes to slow the car. I&#x27;ve got the manual transmission so it only slows the car down to about 15mph and then prompts me to take over and press the brake; if I had the automatic, it would come to a full stop in traffic and only require a tap of the accelerator to resume once traffic ahead started moving.<p>Even though I only have 700 miles on the car and have only used the laser cruise for perhaps 20 or 30 miles in total (mostly just playing with it), I find I still expect the system to brake the car once disengaged. For example, I&#x27;ll be coming up to a red light, lift off the throttle, start braking, and then think to myself &quot;huh, I wonder why the car didn&#x27;t start slowing down for me.&quot;<p>The lane assist feature will correct the steering once or twice if you start to come too close to the lane marker (within maybe 2 feet) but it&#x27;s very subtle and you barely feel it while your hands are on the wheel. After a correction or two (and maybe 10 seconds, I&#x27;m not sure exactly  how it decides), the system tells you &quot;hey, idiot, you&#x27;re supposed to be steering&quot;.  I have, on multiple occasions, been surprised that it &quot;allowed&quot; me to get as close as I was to adjacent cars, before realizing that it only is meant to keep me within my lane, it knows nothing about the vehicles around me. But something about the fact that it has lane assist (and, incidentally, ultrasonic parking sensors) fools me into thinking it knows more than it does. I&#x27;m not saying I was letting the car drive for me, I was fully in control, I was simply surprised that it didn&#x27;t override my judgement of how close is too close.<p>It&#x27;s a brave new world out there. It&#x27;s surprising how quickly you cede mental control, if not physical control, even to systems that have clearly defined limits and features that you don&#x27;t even intend on using, let alone relying on. I imagine things will get worse before they&#x27;ll get better. That said, humans are bad enough drivers that it might not get MUCH worse!