I rented a 2019 Mercedes last week and drove it for over 1200 miles, most of which was driven with the cars driving assist technologies enabled.
My guess is that because this car drives so "carefully", such as automatically following at a safe distance (leaving maybe a 3 second gap between the car in front of it), human drivers will end up causing many more accidents. There must have been more than 50 drivers (with many annoyed stares into my window as they passed) that made unnecessary lane changes to go around me just to then closely follow the car in front of me.
This large gap may make it seem like the car is going slower than it is, as so many drivers tried to overtake me but failed as slower traffic in the other lanes blocked them.
Human drivers may just become worse over time as more law-abiding autonomous vehicles hit the road. "5x" might not be as much of an improvement in the future.
I like the adaptive cruise control, because it drives more carefully than me. I have the same experience as you when I use it, regarding other drivers, but then I realize they're going to drive that way whether I'm using it or not. Therefore, I'm of the opinion that human drivers other than myself will cause the same amount of accidents, but I may cause less using while using it, so in the end there will be less accidents caused by human drivers as more people use adaptive cruise.
On the contrary, I think as AV and other semi-autonomous driving tech becomes more frequent on the road, people will be more easily able to recognize it and won't behave irrationally as you mentioned.
I don't share the same optimism. Many people already stare at their phones while driving on the highway (I especially enjoy jolting them back to attention with a friendly honk), I'm not so confident they'll pick up on the subtleties of autonomous driving.
This is much more than just your classic speed-only "cruise control".
You certainly couldn't drive with classic cruise control in a center or right hand lane (USA) for any extended period of time, at least not in normal highway-speed traffic where cars are merging in and out every few miles.
My guess is that because this car drives so "carefully", such as automatically following at a safe distance (leaving maybe a 3 second gap between the car in front of it), human drivers will end up causing many more accidents. There must have been more than 50 drivers (with many annoyed stares into my window as they passed) that made unnecessary lane changes to go around me just to then closely follow the car in front of me.
This large gap may make it seem like the car is going slower than it is, as so many drivers tried to overtake me but failed as slower traffic in the other lanes blocked them.
Human drivers may just become worse over time as more law-abiding autonomous vehicles hit the road. "5x" might not be as much of an improvement in the future.