Awhile back I was considering a car brands optional accident avoidance sensors, until I heard of a incident that caused the car to slowdown dramatically when it shouldn't and car was rear ended. Tesla autopilot accidents have occurred and have been in the news for some time mostly by people thinking they really are auto pilot operational.
You are clearly an intelligent, logical, man, and thus capable of understanding the basic principles of how the accident avoidance tech of your car works, and thus in which boundary situations it is likely to fail, and thus you can override. For example, my Golf has adaptive cruise control, which is simply a radar that detects moving objects in front of the car, and calculates the direction, velocity, and acceleration of the object. So when I have it on, I can set my cruise control at, say 60, and when I am following a car that is driving slower, the radar detects that speed and slows down to match it, until the car speeds up past 60. It is brilliant at this, and reacts fast. If the car in front slams on the brakes, my car will react faster than I can, and brake in a shorter distance than I could manually if required. If the car in front brakes gently, my car reacts instantly and brakes gently also. If the road has a curve in it, the algorithm deals with this well, and assumes I am also following the same curve, even though it can't actually detect the road lines. If I catch up to a very slow moving car, my car detects it and slows down accordingly and early enough.
The boundary cases you have to be aware of are things like:
- It does NOT detect stationary cars, so if you are coming up to cars stopped at the lights, you have to manually brake.
- If the road you are on has a curve to the left, but there is also a turning lane on the right that turns off the road, and you are following a car that then goes to turn to the right, when you want to continue curving to the left, the radar can't see the road lines, so doesn't know the road continues curving to the left, so assumes you are following the car that is slowing down in the right turning lane, so my car will start to slow down too, even though I don't want it to. However, since I am aware of this case, all I have to do is lightly press my foot on the accelerator until I have passed the car, and my car will ignore the radar until I remove my foot off the accelerator.
- Sometimes a motorbike can change lanes into the lane in front of me, and won't be immediately detected, and when it does, my car realises there is a vehicle in front of me that is too close, so will suddenly brake harder than I'd like. So when this happens, I lightly touch the brakes, which turns off the cruise control, and manually pull back for the bike, and then turn the cruise control back on.
Thus, it is a brilliant system, and super safe, as long as you understand how it works and it's limitations. For me, it results in stress free driving, and I use it constantly in city and country. I still have to steer, so still have to constantly be aware of the traffic, and thus can see every boundary case as it happens, and also don't get bored and stop paying attention. I can't recommend it more highly.