What they were talking about requires FSD. Car manufacturers have been adding various assistive features but none of them are at the level where it’s safe to direct your attention away from the road.
In Germany, Mercedes has a license to sell full self driving cars (the driver can write emails, watch movies, do whatever they like) that are allowed to enable FSD mode while on the highway and driving up to 60 km/h.
They have L3 on the easiest road environment possible and even that’s limited in speed and requires good weather and nothing like tunnels or construction zones. That is a far cry from saying that their cars no longer need good controls for drivers — L3 is predicated on the driver being available to take over at any time.
My position is that cars should be optimized for safe driving until they hit L5 and we’re comfortable saying they don’t need a human driver. It’s one of the most dangerous things we do and should be treated that way.
