photoman43 wrote:
Given the heavy traffic on most interstates these days, I do not see much of a need for self driving unless the system resolves issues associated with heavy traffic.
I just finished driving I 10 from Houston TX to Florida, and the return trip, and my guess is that I was able to use cruise control safely for only about 25%of the driving time, and most of this was from around 6:00am to 8:00am.
I have a new car which has intelligent radar cruise control and lane departure avoidance. I'm still learning how to use them. On my first 10-hour road trip I safely used cruise control, even in heavy traffic, for many hours. It slows you down to maintain an adjustable minimum distance to the vehicle directly in front of you. If you pull out it increases your speed back to the set speed. Locally I've tested the lane departure feature and found it seems to keep the car in the lane following the road provided there are center and side lane markings. I'm a lot less comfortable with that than the cruise control.