[InvisiBill]

Adaptive Cruise Control on my new Volt has made me a more patient driver, but I feel it's also made me less alert. Since it will just fall in line behind the car ahead of me, it's much less frustrating when someone's going slower - I tend to just fall in behind them since it requires no effort on my part. At lights, it'll automatically come to a stop behind the car in front of me. When the light turns green, I tap the Resume button, and it accelerates behind that car as well. In my experience, the sensors seem to do just as good a job as (or better than) I do at figuring out when it needs to slow/stop, which is not surprising at all to me, with modern computerization. Its biggest weakness seems to be when cars move over into a turn lane - it doesn't seem to realize that they're out of the way and I can continue on. But it seems to err on the side of caution, slowing down unnecessarily rather than plowing ahead at 60mph when it shouldn't. It handles it so well, I think I tend to pay less attention now.

However, I'm aware of that fact enough to remind myself, especially when I'm on the bike, that I do need to pay attention. I'm sure others aren't so self-aware. Just look at the stories of what people are caught doing while Tesla Autopilot is driving...

I'm not sure how I feel about this coming to bikes. I like the idea of having super-human sensors monitoring things, but I dislike that it makes it easier to not pay attention.