as part of a personal, self-funded, study I ‘ve driven few premium cars with drive assist and this is my top 3 (deliberately avoiding the term “auto pilot” as I think it is misleading)
are we there yet with advanced driver assistance systems? yes, we are, but only to assist in low speed traffic or motorway driving. by activating the drive assist system, you can scan the road more effectively and somehow it feels you have more mental resources to cope with the driving situation.
are we there yet with advanced driver assistance systems? no, we are not there yet with using drive assist to look in our phone, eat, sleep, read a book. the driver is always few seconds away from regaining control and that transfer of control could happened unexpectedly. driver vigilance and alertness are mandatory even with drive assist activated.
maybe the marketing war between car manufacturers led us to believe that we can have self-driving cars tomorrow. back in 2015 the year 2020 seemed such a realistic target for self-driving cars, but current estimation is for 2025-2030. yes, it is more complex than we thought and that’s ok, my concern is that on the race for self-driving cars we have focused more on user experience and we have somehow neglected driver distraction.
interesting to observe the different marking approach that Tesla has in comparison to the German OEMs. I personally prefer the under-promise and over-deliver approach.
what do you think about drive assist system? are your expectations met by current systems? what do you think about the future of automation?
many thanks to Scott Hodgins and Jon Ward at Tobii Pro
data collection for a personal study, views are my own