Do you feel the same way about backup cameras? I see plenty of people who don't check behind their vehicle before they back up or turn around and look in both side view mirrors before and while they are backing up. The backup cameras are not infallible. And neither are the drivers for that matter.
I think driver assistance systems are okay. A backup camera isn't infallible, nor are physical mirrors. I always use both things to improve my odds of a avoiding a bad outcome. That's hopefully what's taught in driver's education classes.
I'm all for any assistance that requires the driver to take the action, but uses alerts to warn them when they've missed something. Driver augmentation systems. Night-vision assists, lane-drift warnings and lane-change assists, front-facing braking assist w/loud warnings.
It's when the driver is no longer required to fully participate
for some period of time that drivers will invariably lose focus and attention. That's where the danger lies. Until such time as we can make auto-driving systems work reliably enough to not require any human intervention, where the driver can safely sleep while the car drives, that such systems become safe to use. And we're a long way from making that happen. It's almost certainly never going to happen w/out infrastructure sensors and full-time V2V communication.
And even then, what happens when a system is hacked or simply fails? It'll be rare, but that makes it all the more dangerous because, with software doing all the driving, people will lose their hard-earned driving instincts, they'll lose their constantly trained physical mastery over the vehicle.
