Drivers need all the help they can get from automation, even if it backfires now and then. The fact that any idiot who can spell his own name is allowed to hurtle through crowded streets with a two ton killing machine and no failsafes of any kind is clearly absurd.
No, they're far down the list. Less than 2% of all deaths are from auto accidents, fewer than influenza and pneumonia and 20x less than cardiovascular diseases.
Systems that become safer by scaling back automation are anomalies. In general, efforts are better spent improving the automation.
The man vs machine dichotomy is contrived anyway. We personify and blame machines as a scapegoat. I prefer to think of automated systems simply as tools, extensions of human capability. Tools don't screw up, we screw up making them or using them.
IMHO, people underestimate the risk of death and injury from driving. while inciting fear is not really a good educational tactic, i can understand the frustration. my response is to wear a helmet whenever i go for long highway rides. and to avoid transportation as much as possible. (*obviously not for everyone)
edit - disease effects a different crowd than motor vehicles, which i think is part of the risk/cost evaluation.
While car accidents are the leading non-accident way to die, you're 45x more likely to die from a disease.
http://www.socialstyrelsen.se/NR/rdonlyres/2B5A6B25-2026-470...
Page 51-51 has graphs of fatalities ages 1-15 years.
Page 71-72 has graphs of fatalities ages 16-24 years.
Page 117 has graphs of fatalities ages 25-44 and 45-64 years.
The green area labelled "Fordonsolyckor" are those that are traffic accidents.
Summary: At young ages, traffic accidents are a large part of all deaths, but after 45 years of age, the reason of death is dominated by cardio-vascular diseases.
Count me in that group. I rarely ever use cruise control (even on long trips) because I've noticed the lack-of-focus effect. I also drive a stick and when I had a rental car it became quickly apparent to me why people can lose focus when driving a slushbox sedan - it's incredibly boring driving an automatic.
With respect to cars, I'm a big believer that technology and systems should do everything they can to aid the driver without interfering or taking over the core human task of driving the vehicle. The Nissan GTR is a great example of a cutting edge car that enables a human to rip around a track faster simply because systems are faster than humans when it comes to managing braking, shifting, steering correction, etc.
F1 cars are the same way; they're incredible combinations of technology and computer systems, but in no way will a computer ever take the place of Michael Schumacher.
That's a difficult line to draw, especially when (as you describe with the GTR) the job of the computer is to react faster than the human. For 95% of my car trips, I would feel plenty "in control" if I could tell my car where I wanted to end up and let it take me there however it thought was best, assuming it got me there reasonably quickly and safely. After all, if my car was driven by a human chauffeur, nobody would question whether I was in control. Why would an equally reliable computerized control system present a greater challenge to my feeling of control than a human chauffeur?
Adaptive cruise control (and even regular cruise control) definitely crosses the line and is available today in a bunch of mass market vehicles.
With software, there is no such powerful peer contract. Software is not yet as good at self-healing (e.g. braking suddenly) if something unexpected happens. How do you handle a system exception safely and robustly at 65mph?
Automated cars are a pipe dream. Automated auto-pilot for cars on highways (e.g. automated platoons of cars moving in lock-step until they reach their exit) a.k.a Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) will be persistently hobbled in adoption because failure of the interface between humans and machines is dangerous at highway speeds. Recent ITS research has focused on trying to academically prove MITM attacks cannot work for certain ITS systems. Also, most people like freedom to drive whenever, whereever they want.