This set of technology is already on the road today, from nearly every major carmaker. Just look at the luxury car in each line, and find "electronic power steering", "adaptive cruise control" and "active lane keeping". The 2013 Lincoln MKZ is one example, and there were tons of writeups calling it "self-driving, sometimes" when it was announced.
That's the combination that lets the car drive itself on well-marked roads like highways: EPS/ALK allows it to turn the wheel to keep you from crossing divider lines, and ACC maintains a minimum distance from any cars in front of you. Many of them also have automatic crash avoidance that will stop the car if the car in front of you suddenly slows and you don't hit the brakes yourself.
As for ensuring the driver can react fast enough if any of the systems become unavailable, AFAIK all the cars that have this set of features also have systems that will beep at you annoyingly if you take your hands off the wheel. It's one of the unwritten purposes of those "driver drowsiness detection" systems these same luxury cars now come with.
> As for ensuring the driver can react fast enough if any of the systems become unavailable, AFAIK all the cars that have this set of features also have systems that will beep at you annoyingly if you take your hands off the wheel. It's one of the unwritten purposes of those "driver drowsiness detection" systems these same luxury cars now come with.
That's great, 'cause that's one of my concerns with this kind of thing. Still, I wonder if it just might be better to leave everything to be handled manually, since then you have more things to keep you busy and thus awake. I imagine that I could end up like I sometimes do when watching a boring movie late at night - it's very hard to stay awake because I'm not invested in what I'm watching and I am not doing anything but watching it. Of course, it might just be best to pull over and sleep for 15 minutes at that point.
That's the combination that lets the car drive itself on well-marked roads like highways: EPS/ALK allows it to turn the wheel to keep you from crossing divider lines, and ACC maintains a minimum distance from any cars in front of you. Many of them also have automatic crash avoidance that will stop the car if the car in front of you suddenly slows and you don't hit the brakes yourself.
As for ensuring the driver can react fast enough if any of the systems become unavailable, AFAIK all the cars that have this set of features also have systems that will beep at you annoyingly if you take your hands off the wheel. It's one of the unwritten purposes of those "driver drowsiness detection" systems these same luxury cars now come with.