> "driver might manage all driving duties on surface streets then become a passenger as the car enters a highway."
This is the kind of setup I can't wrap my head around. The car might "require" you to take over when you exit the highway, but it can't exactly "make" you. If you fall asleep on the freeway and the car isn't willing/able to drive at the end of your journey, or in edge cases if you were to pass out, etc. what does it do when it gets to your designated exit, or to the final exit of a designated highway? Are there going to be a bunch of cars all stacked up with flashers on the shoulder by every off-ramp waiting for their people to wake up / quit playing on their phones and engage manual mode?
I'm thinking more like a semi truck. Get onto the freeway on-ramp, pull over and get out, then the truck continues on without you for miles before taking an off-ramp where a driver is waiting to handle the nearby streets. I expect truck stops in rural areas will (with DOT help) get special on/off ramps that are approved (maybe a special stop light?) so that trucks can go to a full service pump for fuel and get back on the freeway.
As you say, city driving is hard, but there are a lot of trucks that cross the US on freeways that are easy to automate.
I'm as skeptical about self-driving as just about anyone. But this seems to be getting into real edge case territory. Person falls asleep/is watching a movie and doesn't respond to increasingly urgent alerts? Is this really a problem? And is it a problem that's greater than fatigued driving today?
What happens when there isn't one? Roadworks, and accidents cause frequent closures of the breakdown lane. L3 has a lot of edge cases where the vehicle is supposedly too dumb to drive, but smart enough to know it shouldn't drive. It may be death by a thousand cuts.
This is the kind of setup I can't wrap my head around. The car might "require" you to take over when you exit the highway, but it can't exactly "make" you. If you fall asleep on the freeway and the car isn't willing/able to drive at the end of your journey, or in edge cases if you were to pass out, etc. what does it do when it gets to your designated exit, or to the final exit of a designated highway? Are there going to be a bunch of cars all stacked up with flashers on the shoulder by every off-ramp waiting for their people to wake up / quit playing on their phones and engage manual mode?