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Motor Trend has seen fit to publish this "News Flash", https://www.motortrend.com/news/commentary-there-are-no-self-driving-cars-on-sale-today/ [motortrend.com] with the subheading,

You don't own an autonomous vehicle, no matter what the marketing implies

While this is probably not news to SN readers, MT has seen more than their share of people that don't get it. The first photo is a wrecked and burned Model S.

What exists today is a collection of technologies called Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), which can handle basic driving tasks for short periods of time in specific, ideal conditions. ADAS must be monitored at all times, and the car's driver must be alert, undistracted, and prepared to take control at any moment. The best ADAS available today allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel but not their eyes off the road.

These systems fall under the Society of Automotive Engineers' (SAE) classification system as SAE Level 2. That's level two out of five. What you think of as real self-driving or autonomous driving, where a car pilots itself anywhere at any time in any conditions, is Level 5. Sorry, but we're a long, long way from Level 5.

The SAE Level 0-5 chart is included.

What about Level 3? Glad you asked. Many automakers consider it to be so dangerous, they plan to skip it entirely. Level 3 means a car can drive itself completely in good conditions, but the driver still has to pay attention and be ready to take over at any time. Problem is, study after study shows humans are absolutely terrible at this kind of multitasking and refocusing.

In a matter of minutes, people become complacent and overconfident in the computer. Their minds wander. They daydream, check their phone, play with the radio, dig through a bag or bin, fall asleep, or do any number of things other than sit and stare at the road, ready to resume driving themselves. Worse, those studies also show human reaction times become dangerously long when the car stops driving itself and tells them to take command. We need much longer than normal to process what the car tells us, read the environment, read the situation, and react. That kind of delay is almost a guaranteed disaster, and it's potentially fatal.

Your submitting AC has been saying the same thing about SAE Level 3 since I first heard it existed. I might accept a Level 3 car if the hand-off time was guaranteed/proven to be a minute or more. This might be closer to a Level 4 car that included complete weather data and, for example, handed-off a minute before the car drove into a fog bank.

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