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(again this one went off the rails. not a rant at you obviously lol. this topic gets me fired up, clearly)

Yeah the most tech I've had in a personal car is basic airbags, ABS, power steering, etc. I like more and better mechanical safety mechanisms, but I don't want to drive-by-wire and have a servo system running the steering or other important controls.

Properly functioning lane assist probably saves a lot of lives due to driver fatigue. I see people wander out of their lanes to a degree that makes me go "okay prepare for a crash" a few times a year on highways.

What concerns me perhaps more than anything is that even the most disinterested driver behind the wheel of a 20 year old car becomes a critical part of the control loop for the whole machine. This sounds scary, but the whole system tends to work pretty well so long as the driver has a good basic education in driving and the risks of distracted and fatigued driving. The human part of the system extends its senses to absorb what it reads from the car and the mind becomes to one extent or another, "tasked" with the job of becoming the eyes and brain of the whole mechanical system.

As you remove direct control and feedback from the machine the driver stops being the organic mediating part of the whole system and the various ways this starts to make everything more dangerous are not easy to quantify at least for a lay person like me.

An illustrative part of the problem though, keeping with lane assist, is that these technologies are training and conditioning drivers that there is a much larger margin of error for distraction.

If you are a fresh driver and you're driving a car that catches you and guides you back into your lane while you turn in your seat to chat to your friends on the back seat, and that is all you know, then in aggregate you are creating the conditions for more distracted driving accidents rather than reducing the severity of the existing rate of distracted driving accidents.

These assists ostensibly free up mental space so you can be an even better driver, more capable of paying attention to what matters, but since we are removing people from the machine they don't re-allocate their attention to other aspects of managing the vehicle, they use it to do stupid human shit.

That same fresh driver also hasn't learned to notice other people being inattentive. It becomes a social problem too.

Suddenly you find yourself in the driver's seat of the car. You don't even have to reach over to grab the wheel and avert disaster. Instead you watch the car drive you and your son into a tree. Because you are just along for the ride. You aren't really responsible anymore on a basic mechanical level.

I imagine you've noticed the little lights on wing mirrors now that show whether the car has detected a vehicle alongside or in their blindspot? I doubt they work as well for bikes as they do other cars.

Even if they do, a driver who has grown up expecting them to work isn't going to also perform shoulder and mirror checks before merging.

You already know how many people never bothered checking even when it was just an act of faith that they were clear to move over. Now you've got people looking at a little light or relying on a buzz in the steering wheel or whatever, instead of turning their fucking head.

What happens when there's bird shit on the light or on the sensor? All they had to do was turn their fucking head and now they've killed someone. Thanks for the driver assistance.

People blame covid and pandemic measures for the current state of driver ability etc but personally I think its this shit I'm describing.

The US navy has studied cybernetics for a really long time, thats the thing with a person becoming a part of the mechanical system. There's no good rational excuse for us to be making this massive error as a society, but we won't avoid it thanks to mechanisms like regulatory capture. It is unavoidable that this will get worse.

Passengers should be in the passenger seat and/or on public transport not behind the wheel. ;-;