Vilters, the analogy with car cruise control is closer to the mark than you perhaps intend. It leads to complacency. People set cruise control in situations where they should have their foot hovering over the brakes. Of course now there is radar linked braking available in the latest models. For aircraft, pilots who spend most of their time turning knobs on regular short flights on the same route, they too can become complacent. The Colgan Air case is a good example. The best pilots are always thinking about 'what if' scenarios, but fatigue, a domestic dispute, financial stress, alcohol and a ton of other things can leave any person with dulled responses. This is always a hidden factor with mistakes. It is also why HAL needs to be given more responsibility, not less. The sensors on the human will fail before HAL loses all SA. AF447 may have had frozen pitot tubes but it was the human that commanded the THS to its stop.