A good example is ADHD. I have severe ADHD so I take meds to manage it. If I am driving an automatic car on cruise control I find it very difficult to maintain long term high intensity concentration. The solution for me is to drive a manual. The constant involvement of maintaining speed, revs, gear ratio, and so on mean I can pay attention much easier. Add to that thinking about hypermiling and defensive driving and I have become a very safe driver, putting about 25-30 thousand kms on my car each year for over a decade without so much as a fender bender. In an automatic I was always tense, forcing focus on the road, and honestly it hurt my neck and shoulders because of the tension. In my zippy little manual I have no trouble driving at all.

Are you me? I love weaving through traffic as fast as I can… in a video game (like Motor Town behind the wheel). In real life I drive very safe and it is boring af for my ADHD so I do things like try to hit the apex of turns just perfect as if I was driving at the limit but I am in reality driving at a normal speed.

Part of living with severe ADHD is you don’t get breaks from having to play these games to survive everyday life, as you say it is a stressful reality in part because of this. You brought up a great point too that both of us know, when our focus is on something and activated we can perform at a high level, but accidents don’t wait for our focus, they just happen, and this is why we are always beating ourselves up.

We can look at self driving car tech and intuit a lot about the current follies of it because we know what focus is better than anyone else, especially successful tech company execs.