No, automation is required due to poor driving standards.

One of the benefits of automation will be that rear fog lights will not be illuminated in rain.

My newish car has automatic headlights, which were fascinating when I drove it for the first time in the dark. The "upgrading" of the M27 was taking place so there were hundreds (thousands, tens of thousands?) of cones, which picked out the beam pattern. It kept changing to ensure that drivers on the opposite carriageway were not dazzled, but nonetheless illuminated the left hand edge of the road very satisfactorily.

Mrs P's 2009 car turns the headlights on in the dark even when the switch is in the off position. 

Chris Pearson but do you think that through automation, we're in danger of worsening driving standards even further? If a driver no longer has to think (or assumes they no longer have to think) isn't that a recipe for eventual disaster? 

All too often I'll come across someone on the motorway at night with their rear lights off and just some dim headlights on. Trying to alert them to the danger never seems to work and even if you're able to find the opportunity to speak to them tell them that their lights aren't switched on their response is an indignant 'my lights are automatic' as if they have no say in the matter. 

Lisa Miles said:

their response is an indignant 'my lights are automatic' as if they have no say in the matter.

I haven't had that experience.

I think that driving standards have been getting steadily worse, but many folk are protected from themselves by modern vehicles.

Try driving a 100 year old car with no synchromesh, two wheel brakes, a rigid steering column, no seatbelts, etc! It makes you concentrate a bit more.

Ideally everybody should have track experience. Mind you, I drove a M-B C63S at Brooklands last year and its performance in all respects was far far in excess of that which any sensible person would use on the road.

One of my pet hates is “day light driving lights” as people drive around without any rear lights on, tonight I did a taxi run picking my wife and her friends up from a restaurant and dropping the friends home, a car pulled out of a pub car park without any rear lights on despite having lights on the front.

If lights are needed on the front they are needed on the back, like the Volvo’s that were the first cars in the Uk to always have lights on.

Whilst we are at it, dedicated knobs and buttons on the dashboard that can be found intuitively in the dark without glancing down are much safer than touch screens and multifunctional keys. 

I had a lift home a couple of weeks ago and the lady driving was rather perturbed because her car had been to a garage for a service and MOT, the mechanic had turned the lights off and she couldn’t remember how to turn them on having had them on automatic since she bought the car.

Then there is the Landrover pannier boxes stuck on the side windows blocking the view from the drivers door mirror, I can have a proper moan about them.

good afternoon,
I can compare the automation to automatic transmissions (nowadays many drivers prefer to buy a car with an automatic transmission than a mechanical transmission), it is much more convenient for the driver to use an automatic transmission and the technology is also advancing and more and more drivers are looking for maximum comfort and automation in their vehicle.

I can explain the progress of autonomy for the example of the automatic transmissions of certain manufacturers, as it increases, in my opinion, autonomy will become more widespread.

Explanation: The history of the creation of an automatic transmission

The idea to create a gearbox with an automatic transmission was born at the beginning of the last century. Some cars had transmissions very similar to those used in modern cars.
In Europe, Mercedes produced a small series of cars with a gearbox in 1914, which can conventionally be called an automatic.

In the late 1930s, companies such as Chrysler, Ford, and GMC came close to developing mass-produced cars with automatic transmissions, the first of which was GMC, which began installing automatic transmissions in 1940. .
Hydromantic for Oldsmobile and Cadillac vehicles. This transmission had a three-speed gearbox with hydraulic shift control.

Continued development of automatic transmissions, until the early 80s of the 20th century, followed the path of improving production technology and improving the quality and reliability of the mechanical part of the automatic transmission. No fundamentally new solutions are used here.

At the same time, the hydraulic system of the automatic transmission was constantly modernized. They tried to bring it to absolute perfection in order to provide the maximum comfort of driving a car. As an example we can mention the Mercedes company, which developed an original and unique hydraulic control unit circuit for its automatic transmissions 722.3, 722.4, 722.5.

Since the 1980s, car manufacturers have been using electronic control systems for automatic transmissions. I did it for the first time in 1983. Toyota... then in 1987 Ford also started using it in A4LD transmissions to control the transmission clutch and torque converter. Electronic unit... In 1984, Chrysler introduced the advanced A604 and A606 transmissions (41TE and 42LE) for front-wheel drive vehicles with a fully electronic control system and at that time very advanced. By 1991, GMC had developed the 4L60-E and 4T60-E transmissions, also with a fully electronic control system.

Today it is possible to distinguish between two trends in the development of transmissions with automatic transmissions.
One of them is characterized by a constant increase in the number of gears. In the early 1980s, a fourth gear (overdrive) appeared in automatic transmissions, which was caused by the need to significantly improve the fuel consumption and economic performance of cars. At the same time, a torque converter lock is used to achieve the same goal. Then, at the beginning of the 90s of the same century, in order to improve the dynamic characteristics of the car, five-speed automatic transmissions were developed (another reduction gear appeared). At the beginning of 2001, the German BMW company began to install the company's ZF-6HP26 automatic transmission on its cars. Here, unlike five-speed automatic transmissions, a second overdrive appeared. And finally, recently, companies such as Honda, Audi, Nissan and others began to actively use continuously variable transmissions. transmission ratio (CVT).

Slightly off topic but I am often pulling up next to cars/vans at red lights to tell the driver that one or all of their rear/brake lights aren't working. Had mostly thankful reactions, but it will probably get into trouble at some point.

Did it to a black cab driver once with one brake light out. After he thanked me I asked why no other cabbie had mentioned it, "scum of the earth the lot of em" he said

In the response I wrote above, my intention is that as the development of technology has come up on the issue of transmission, so will the autonomous technology. Lights that turn on by themselves is not new. Wipers also work on their own, and when the rain gets stronger, the wipers also work faster and vice versa.

Oddly as a UK driver, I only ever drive an automatic gearbox when in the USA, who seem to have little else. I do not enjoy the lack of direct control - the ability to double declutch, and engine braking  (change down and use higher revs for control on corners etc.) is part of the way I was taught to driven and it feels very wrong to surrender that.

Mike

I much prefer an automatic box, especially when driving in traffic. Selecting neutral at the lights, etc. is boring. An auto box is also better for making rapid progress. My present modern car has a 9 speed auto box, which claims to be able to change in 100 ms and there is no need to lift off the loud pedal at any stage when accelerating.

I am not at all sure that engine braking is a good idea due to increased wear, not least on the clutch - replacing brake pads or shoes is much easier. As for corners, the appropriate gear is the one which allows you to pull away best on completion of the manoeuvre.

I have admit that having been driving in the Cornish mizzle over the last couple of days there have been several times when I've been caught out by this, exactly for this reason. I'm so used to the auto on "just working" that I probably don't engage brain as much as I should, particularly after months of clear weather. That said, my car is now 13 years old, maybe the technology's improved? My auto lights (Honda Civic) do work very well for pure light levels, what they don't work for is poor visibility, which we get a lot down here over autumn and winter, and I guess is much harder to detect.

It's rather like one of the issues I've been slightly involved with in the day job over the last few years: Imagine a rail level crossing where at present the crossing user has to look up and down the track, and a proposed system where (simplistically) there is an "add on" warning system with instructions that the user should stop on a red signal, and if no red signal is shown only cross if they've looked up and down the track. Will they actually look up and down the track or just walk straight across? Probably they (or at least many) will just walk straight across - after all in their mind "the technology" would have lit the red signal if there was a train coming. It's surprisingly difficult to fit assisting safety measures.

There's the simple alternative which my wife's car has which is that you can just drive with dipped headlights (and taillights) all the time and they turn off when the engine's off - much safer but not very fuel efficient!

Cheers,  

 Andy