Well as am airline pilot who uses autopilot 95% of the time in the air, I can assure you the autopilot is controlled by me. It takes the manual task away and allows the "driver" to monitor what's going on around me. HK would be a better place to drive if most of the drivers has autopilots.
I can only second that.
On the road to fully automated cars, having auto pilot and auto "throttle" (cruise control) is a step on the way. I do like driving and I hope it will still be allowed to drive yourself, in my lifetime. Although immensely cool to have a 100% self driving car, it would take the fun out of it.
Bill Lear - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bill Lear was one of the pioneers in aviation inventions, known in particular for the Learjet aircraft series, still produced to this day. He also put quite an effort into auto-pilot technology (see the link above) and many other technologies. Back then, the major airlines refused auto pilots initially, as they wouldn't surrender control of the aircraft from pilots to a machine. Later on, it was finally realised what a great assistance it was - having automatics doing the tedious, repetitious simple tasks, allowing the pilot/driver/sailor to focus on what's important, and keep from being fatigued for approach and landing.
In Hong Kong, a lot of attention needs to be assigned to the ever changing speed limit, and the constantly changing actual speed of traffic, as a lot of cars will suddenly change from x0 km/h
above to 10 km/h
below the speed limit, whenever there is an orange painted box at the side of the road. All this attention to box ticking and formal speed limit adherence is ironically detrimental to road safety - as it takes attention away from traffic itself and real life threats.
I use cruise control a lot on the Model S, often even on roads off the expressway. I am getting more and more used to it, being comfortable with resume, add/subtract 1 km/h or 5 km/h. I have my own comfort speed to go past speeding cameras, and with the electric motor being so instant, it's great to use with a cruise control as it easily maintains speed within 1 km/h. Those that just passed me before the speeding camera, are suddenly braking and I will often be sliding past them (traffic permitting), while they blast past me again 100 meters after the orange box is passed. The same happens in many other places in the world, the most profound I experienced so far is the highway between Dubai and Abi Dhabi - it's a constant stop-go exercise. Bad for safety, bad for fuel economy and bad for passenger and driver comfort. But it satisfies the bureaucrats and generates revenue for those that fall out of line now and then. Box ticking and hoop jumping only, nothing else.
On automation comes the danger of complacency. Current state of autonomous driving still requires the driver to monitor the automatics at all times. When this is implemented, there
will be times where someone is taking a nap, leaving it to the autopilot to drive the car. And
most of the time, all will be OK. There will be accidents as some people will rely too much on automatics, and this wouldn't be unique to more or less self-driving cars, it happens whenever automation is involved. The times automation can save the day, though, will be many. Imagine how many accidents happen because of human error - which could have been picked up easily by already existing technology of cameras, radars, sensors and computers?