It's much more comfortable not to have to micromanage the exact position of the car at every moment, as a manual driver does

I think your "automatic driving" argument is wishful thinking

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_hypnosis and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automaticity

It’s a well known phenomenon.

It's really not, the human brain is _really_ good at abstracting.

In pretty much exactly the same way you don't have to pay attention to balancing to walk, your brain learns to do the same thing for cycling and driving. It abstracts the mechanics of the car (e.g. turning the wheel to turn left/right) and sort of extends its view of your "body" to the car.

This isn't an instantaneous process of course, it takes time to build up that abstraction, but it absolutely exists. If your brain wasn't good at doing those types of abstractions then walking/running/typing/speaking/breathing/etc. would take a phenomenal amount of attention and practice.

For some people it’s easier to zone out and drive on auto, for others its easier to use FSD. Some people find it easy to zone out in bumper to bumper traffic, others not so much.

Except by your own admission you're not "not driving." You're monitoring the car, except without any physical feedback loop with your hands and feet. The only difference in mental load is the physical control of your limbs to do minor speed and direction adjustments. YMMV but I just find that less taxing than vigilantly monitoring a piece of software because I know how that sausage is made.

And yet most of us like cruise control and lane keeping.

It will prevent dangerous sitations like:

- entering a room and stopping abruptly while wondering why you entered.

- stepping on legos.

- the coffee table shin scenario.

I mean this one: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/t...

there's no such thing as perfect safety

Tesla does not release any verifiable data on FSD / Autopilot, and for a good reason (good for them).

If you have information that Tesla is faking statistics it's giving to the government, you should make your evidence public

Tesla is pretty much the only car maker that does NOT provide data on autonomous car testing. It's not mandatory.

As for the concerns about the data accuracy, they are very much public now. Here is the latest ongoing NTHSA investigation into Tesla:

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2022/INCR-EA22002-14496.pdf

Some quotes:

"Gaps in Tesla’s telematic data create uncertainty regarding the actual rate at which vehicles operating with Autopilot engaged are involved in crashes. Tesla is not aware of every crash involving Autopilot even for severe crashes because of gaps in telematic reporting. Tesla receives telematic data from its vehicles, when appropriate cellular connectivity exists and the antenna is not damaged during a crash, that support both crash notification and aggregation of fleet vehicle mileage. Tesla largely receives data for crashes only with pyrotechnic deployment,2 which are a minority of police reported crashes.3 A review of NHTSA’s 2021 FARS and Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS) finds that only 18 percent of police-reported crashes include airbag deployments."

"ODI uses all sources of crash data, including crash telematics data, when identifying crashes that warrant additional follow-up or investigation. ODI’s review uncovered crashes for which Autopilot was engaged that Tesla was not notified of via telematics. Prior to the recall, Tesla vehicles with Autopilot engaged had a pattern of frontal plane crashes that would have been avoidable by attentive drivers, which appropriately resulted in a safety defect finding.

Peer Comparison Data gathered from peer IR letters helped ODI document the state of the L2 market in the United States, as well as each manufacturer’s approach to the development, design choices, deployment, and improvement of its systems. A comparison of Tesla’s design choices to those of L2 peers identified Tesla as an industry outlier in its approach to L2 technology by mismatching a weak driver engagement system with Autopilot’s permissive operating capabilities. "

Tesla only counts crashes with pyrotechnic deployments. NHTSA has stated this only accounts for ~18% of crashes on average [1] which can be derived from publicly available datasets. No competent statistician or scientist would miss a literal 5x underestimation that is frequently mentioned by laypeople as a source of uncompensated bias and that is easily derivable from well-known public datasets. They make no attempt to account for other less easily computable or subtle forms of bias before blasting it at the top of their lungs to convince customers to risk their lives.

That is intentional falsification meant to push product and has no place in civil society.

[1] https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2022/INCR-EA22002-14496.pdf

Also you’re not personally responsible if your chauffeur has an accident.

The Elon miracle, he scams you, but you still defend him and pretend like you’re happy with the scam. "In less than a year you’ll be able to get from New York to San Francisco during your sleep". That was in 2016. 8 years later, he says "robotaxi" and people still believe him.

It’s a world scale Stockholm syndrome.

if you don't pay attention when you're driving with a taxi/Uber/chauffeur, that doesn't seem very smart

There are a lot of those these days.

The latest FSD is pretty damn good.

And that was in the first 3 of 3 tests.

As the author of this blog post: I drive a Tesla, I tried FSD, and it failed miserably in near perfect conditions. How exactly is that derangement?