IMHO airplanes demonstrate the exact opposite. A plane can not only potentially fly the entire flight path on its own, it can also autonomously land. The reason why pilots still hand fly planes is 1) because the whole process is not automatic and you are still receiving directions from an ATC, and 2) to keep their proficiency in controlling the plane.

Numerous times I've seen pilots complain that their employer requires autopilot to be used wherever possible, while they would like to fly the plane by themselves occasionally.

If we polished off the autopilot to also handle take-off and taxi, and installed it in every single plane that exists, I'm pretty sure the entire aviation industry could be completely automated.

Airplanes generally somewhat safer than driving. By quite a margin.

Without consulting the literature, it just seems easy to believe that machine-like consistency 99.9% of the time is more important to safety than confusion in the 0.1%.

It really depends on what 0.1%.

If the car fails to detect one in a thousand cars in front of you, or one in a thousand corners, I can see that being highly dangerous.

Let's say you change lane 5 times while commuting. That's 50 times per week. Now, are you going to pay attention well enough that you catch it twice a year just before it pulls out right into another car?

Perhaps likening it to having another person driving you would be good. If you were given a perfect chauffeur, except with the knowledge that they'll drive straight through one in a thousand red lights with no warning, are you confident you'll catch them?