The F1 example is totally wrong. The F1 controller runs at 10kHz hard real-time, the car controller at 500mHz, a human driver can react at maximum 30ms. A F1 driver is nothing compared to its controller, whilst the normal car driver has comparable reaction times.

You cannot train a F1 driver for highly dynamic events at 20k rpm and 4000 NM forces at the axles, you need automated controllers for that. You can train him for simple things, like gear switching (5ms) and hitting the breakpoints right. But an AI will be at least 10.000 better than a human on this.

You need a slow human brain for the stupid mistakes instead.

> Your average driver is already at the limits of human capabilities with no room for improvement unless they go train to drive like F1 racers.

This is nowhere near true. The skill range from average driver (who knows nothing about car control or reacting correctly) to F1 drivers is vast. There's a huge gray area between these extremes that would be improve safety is people chose (or were forced to) get some training.

Even something as basic as taking a car control clinic once a year would improve the average driver skill and safety by a huge amount.

I don't think response time is the issue here - at the moment the computer doesn't have the intelligence or ability to learn of the human, so the human is going to be safer in situations the computer was not programmed to handle. I expect we will eventually get human level AI (but maybe not very soon), and if that is used for autopilot then the computer could have the safety edge with faster reaction time if in-car hardware is fast enough.

> the tech will assuredly one day be faster than a human

I'll be happy to take it seriously after that happens. In the meantime, I'm sticking with my belief that unreliable automation is worse than no automation.

> Your average driver is already at the limits of human capabilities with no room for improvement unless they go train to drive like F1 racers.

You just dreamed up this statement and immediately believed it.