Yes, but paying attention to the necessary degree is natural when driving and completely unnatural when being driven. With a little bit of exaggeration, it’s like sensing the trajectory of an incoming tennis ball and hitting it back just right versus sitting down and doing the math to calculate the incoming trajectory, speed, desired point of impact etc.
I don’t think it’s so much being unwilling to give up control but rather being willing to hand control to an insufficiently capable system.
I’ve been observing Autopilot behavior quite keenly on the various loaners I’ve been driving while my 3 is in the shop for the customary remedial manufacturing activities.
Objectively, it drives poorly (judging simply by the frequncy of its murder attempts). Subjectively, it’s also largely unpleasant and i find driving with TACC alone to be a lot more relaxing. Also, now that I’m driving an older AP1 Model S loaner, I can state that unfortunately AP1 is still better at the basics of driving. There may be some things that AP2 does better but, at the core, AP1 is still a superior system (probably solely due to its ability to more accurately measure relative speed using the front radar).
I can see where you are coming from, just doesn't occur like that to me. Since driving is second nature to most of us by now, being driven by ap is more like putting your hands on the wheel while another driver ( I imagine a 16 y/o teenager) is doing the same on the same wheel. As long as the muscles of both of you agree, its still pretty automatic. You feel the wheel moving for you and its not until it does something you object to that your attention starts yelling at you. If you treat the car like a 16 y/o driver its driving skill seems appropriate.
Since I only use it on divided freeways, to me it is very very very good at that driving. I am sure that with my being in the Bay Area, there is much better data for the local freeways. There are a few things I wish it did better, but overall I find it great at doing the long boring stretches with or without stop and go. I send bug reports every single time it does something objectionable even simple things as I hope there is someone looking at this data.
I have yet to encounter any "Murder Events" or any event where the car failed so badly that imminent deadly collision was impending. The worst near collision I have experienced is when merging at 35 mph, it simply wouldn't give the other driver room to merge, as it was following the speed of the car ahead of me in my lane. I took control when the gap between my front fender and their rear fender was 18" I do not know if it would have recognized a collision impending at 12" or just run into the car next to me.
Where it needs a lot of work:
Merging- Car basically ignores other vehicle blinkers, and other cars half in your lane but moving in until it recognizes them as an object in your path and brakes suddenly. Wish it would look a bit at the cars directly in front and behind of you in the adjacent lanes and make better decisions.
Changing lanes - If there is a spot open in traffic flow right next to you and you trigger a lane change, its first choice is to slow down, even if maintaining speed or speeding up slightly would complete the lane change.
Phantom braking - It really likes to brake excessively when the car in front of you changes lanes out of your lane. I assume this behavior is to give maximum response time to the AP system in case the car in front of you is dodging an object. It would be very difficult to stop in time for a pallet or something like that in the fast lane if the car in front of you barely could avoid it by changing lanes.
Display - Currently other vehicles are displayed in a very jumpy manner, not very confidence inspiring that the computer really has a handle on all of the traffic
General awareness of traffic - related to merging, but in essence the car doesn't seem to look beyond the cars immediately adjacent to it. If it knew that a merge was coming such as an off or on ramp it could perhaps give a bit of space, and try to make the "Zipper" work as merging
Things I haven't yet experienced but want to, to give me a good idea as to the capabilities of the system, and increase my knowledge of where to trust it:
Automatic evasion from an incoming car about to crash into you.
Automatic stopping or avoidance due to debris/obstructions in the road. I don't even know what it would take to trigger an emergency stop event. Would a pallet be enough? How about a tire or step ladder?
Avoidance or warning of a pedestrian or bicycle who was driving poorly or where they weren't supposed to
