ton of automation and ‘convenience’ being sold is terribly thought out or makes life more complex than not having it.

People burning alive in Teslas because we don't want those unsightly door handles comes to mind.

I have smart switches, mostly because I'm a tinkerer and build and repair things for fun. I work in IT, so I don't trust any of this. But the switches work like normal for people not used to it. While I also have a button that turns all the lights off in the whole house at once.

My main automations are basically timers. They turn lights on and off at sunrise/down. And one that turns on my backdoor lights when my garage door opens.

As for cars, I totally agree. Adaptive cruise control is the extent of the smart I want in a car. I've had too many false positives where the car will automatically apply the brakes when it didn't need to. And not once where I was in danger of crashing. Once on a bend in the road where a car was parked on the side and another where an RV had pulled to the side on a turn out to let people pass and the car freaked out because it didn't realize the road turned.

I've also had it nudge the wheel too often when I'm purposely hugging one side of the lane because there is construction or a car on the side of the road.

I think automation in general has been in an awkward stage for a while, maybe analogous to adolescence or puberty. At some point our immediate world will become truly automated, able to sense what we need or want and provide it with very minimal setup and instruction, like a cocoon of personal convenience. Right now it's more like a 19th century vision of a house of the future with pulleys and wires everywhere - we haven't gotten rid of the pulleys and wires, we've just moved them into apps.