Toyota, Mercedes, BMW, and Jaguar all have a radar based cruise control available on some models in some markets. Me, I've 3 cars with cruise control and have probably used it less than 20 times. Maybe it's just me, but I like being the one doing the driving, sometimes on long drives the activity of driving can become taxing, but I'd much rather realize I'm getting tired and pull off the road for a break than be so uninvolved with what the car is doing that I could easily nod off behind the wheel... Also, my faith in technology is simply not good enough to trust any telemetry system in a commercially available sedan, what happens when a grocery bag floating through traffic smacks a couple of the radar trancievers and your car commences emergency braking on the freeway taking both you and the people following you by complete suprise. Seems like a small glitch has a high potential for causing bad situations...
Before I got a car with cruise control, I thought, "Cute toy, but what's the point?" It wasn't until my first >4 hour drive using it that I finally got the point.
The benefit, at least the way I use it, is not that one can continue driving when tired, but that one can drive longer before becoming tired. And I agree that it's important never to become uninvolved in the act of driving -- I'm still paying attention to my speed, as well as everything else; I'm just relieved of the burden of constantly tweaking it until I observe a situation that requires my intervention.
As for the grocery bag scenario, I'd want to do a whole lot of testing on any design+algorithm I came up with, to be sure problems like that had been solved, and it'd still have to have instant manual override the moment the driver touched a control.
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The benefit, at least the way I use it, is not that one can continue driving when tired, but that one can drive longer before becoming tired. And I agree that it's important never to become uninvolved in the act of driving -- I'm still paying attention to my speed, as well as everything else; I'm just relieved of the burden of constantly tweaking it until I observe a situation that requires my intervention.
As for the grocery bag scenario, I'd want to do a whole lot of testing on any design+algorithm I came up with, to be sure problems like that had been solved, and it'd still have to have instant manual override the moment the driver touched a control.