One of the reasons the current "Self Driving" cars kinda suck. Majority of the time you're just not doing anything, but still have to be 100% attentive.
It really is comically reversed. Robots are far better than humans at watching for a long time and jumping in to help instantly with an acute problem when needed (like braking or swerving to avoid an obstacle). Humans are better at interpreting a complex scene and making a high level plan.
And this is basically what most other manufacturers’ driver assists do.
My wife’s car has adaptive cruise. It just needs to watch constantly and adjust your speed to ensure the distance between you and the car in front remains relatively constant.
It has lane keeping assist and lane departure alerting. It constantly tracks where the lines on the road are and either gently nudges you back in the lane, or beeps at you if you cross a line.
It has emergency braking, it’s constantly watching and if it sees you approaching something at a rate or distance that suggests you are likely to hit it, it will alert you. If you continue, it will apply the brakes for you.
If you’re stopped for a period of time (like at a light) and the car in front of you pulls away and you don’t after a brief moment, it will ding to get your attention and let you know traffic is moving.
Pretty much all of this is making use of the strengths of the computer (uninterrupted attention, quick reaction times) to make up for the weaknesses of the human (distractable, slower reaction times) instead of trying to do the reverse.
I've found the self-steering of new cars to be not at all useful for the stated use case. In my car, the self-steering pushes back a bit and deviates from the course ever so slightly so that you have to keep your hands on the wheel. I'd rather steer it myself.
But in those moments where I'm trying to find the UI for adjusting some climate setting, and I don't have my eyes on the road, that's when the self-driving is useful.
Maybe technology creates its own problems. To be fair, the radar cruise control is nice for long drives.
I think sweet spot is probably somewhere with adaptive cruise control and light lane assist. Too much beyond that and you have to be fully autonomous in all situations.
Perhaps you could interpret "100% attentive" as "at the same level of attentiveness as being without the current generation of 'self driving' technology"?
