> my brain no longer has to worry about those mundane things
I would be terrified to share the road with someone of this mindset. Your vehicle is a lethal weapon when you are driving it around (assisted or otherwise). At no point can someone claim that a tesla vehicle circa today is able to completely assume the duty of driving. You are still 100% responsible for everything that happens in and around that car. You had better have a plan for what happens if autopilot decides to shit the bed while a semi jackknifes in front of you.
The exceptions are what will kill you - and others - every single time. It's not the boring daily drives where 50 car pileups and random battery explosions occur. Maybe your risk tolerance is higher. Mine is not. Please consider this next time you are on the road.
This...is entirely the point OP is making. You get more brain power to watch out for the semi jackknifing into you, the car switching lanes without signaling, the truck about to lose a bucket or chair from its bed. This is stuff you may not catch when you're spending your brain power focusing on staying between the lanes and keeping your distance between the car in front.
When you automate away the mundane, exceptions are much easier to catch.
Self-driving cars will take that stuff over 99% of the time, but the 1% where it screws up is the dangerous part. There are plenty of examples where a self-driving car seemingly randomly seems to go completely haywire, without any obvious reason.
Instead of spending brain power on driving properly, you now have to spend brain power on looking at what you should be doing _and_ checking if the car actually agrees and is doing it.
Staying 100% focused without actually _doing_ anything is incredibly difficult. Many countries intentionally add curves to their highways to keep drivers alert: having a pencil-straight road for hundreds of miles really messes with the human brain.
> You get more brain power to watch out for the semi
That doesn’t help at all if you’re reading a book or playing on your phone, both of which are things I observe Tesla drivers doing pretty often when I’m in the Bay Area.
Do you get concerned about mathematical errors because the computer is doing the calculation instead of someone doing it by hand?
It's the same thing here. The computer is assisting me so that I can take care of the novel situations, the exceptions if you will. I can pay closer attention to the road and see that jackknifed trailer sooner because I wasn't looking at my speedometer to check my speed.
And I don't have a Tesla, I use a different autopilot system.
You're misunderstanding him at best and projecting at worst.
He's saying that he no longer has to worry about those things the same way cruise control lets you not worry about the speedometer needle and dedicate more of your attention budget outside the car.
Of course you can be an idiot and spend it on your cell phone but that's not really a failure mode specific to any given vehicle technology.
I would be terrified to share the road with someone of this mindset. Your vehicle is a lethal weapon when you are driving it around (assisted or otherwise). At no point can someone claim that a tesla vehicle circa today is able to completely assume the duty of driving. You are still 100% responsible for everything that happens in and around that car. You had better have a plan for what happens if autopilot decides to shit the bed while a semi jackknifes in front of you.
The exceptions are what will kill you - and others - every single time. It's not the boring daily drives where 50 car pileups and random battery explosions occur. Maybe your risk tolerance is higher. Mine is not. Please consider this next time you are on the road.