A recent news report describes an automobile (pun intended) accident. The headline reads:
"Tesla driver killed in Autopilot crash had praised safety of system"
And includes the passage:
A driver with a history of speeding who was so enamoured of his Tesla Model S sedan that he nicknamed the car "Tessy" and praised the safety benefits of its sophisticated Autopilot system has become the first U.S. fatality in a wreck involving a car in self-driving mode
And:
Joshua D. Brown of Canton, Ohio, the 40-year-old owner of a technology company, was killed May 7 in Williston, Florida, when his car's cameras failed to distinguish the white side of a turning tractor-trailer from a brightly lit sky and didn't automatically activate its brakes
Yes, this was a car accident. But, in the context of all the technology becoming available to GA, the same automation attractions are temping in aircraft, and equally unforgiving when the unexpected happens. We are at risk of loosing basic handling and judgement skills because we allow the technology to do it for us.
I understand that this fellow ignored a tractor trailer hazard, thinking his car would automatically take care of it for him. I was a back seat passenger in a hi tech Volvo, at highway speed on a narrow road in Norway last summer, when to all of our surprise, the brakes suddenly applied fully, and the car began to leave the lane under limited control (the driver had been, and continued to steer, but had not touched the brakes). I noticed a bird fly away, and realized that the bird had been detected as a collision hazard, and the car decided to stop itself.
My friend who owns a 182RG emailed me yesterday of the plane entering a "snap roll" on autopilot, when the artificial horizon instrument failed and toppled. He recovered safely, as he was in VMC, but with alarm.
In the world of incredible automation, and "labour saving" systems, we can't give up our basic skills in simply flying the plane well, and being the ultimate and primary safety system, to the exclusion of all other systems. Pilots fly planes, not the other way around....