"Hands off," means the driver will eventually become accustomed to letting their guard down over time.
When I drive a vehicle manually, it's the opposite: I remain (for the most part, yes I am human,) aware of my surroundings and I recognize that I am fully responsible for my vehicles speed and position. This has never failed me. When I have made a mistake, I grew from that lesson and the likelihood of that mistake repeating is minimal. For example, not just relying on side mirrors, but double-checking blind spots.
The issue that I see with these autonomous systems is they work *really well.* And that is a problem because people see they work really well, and they get complacent. They now let their guard down to their own detriment. It is human nature to do so.
This is why we don't have autopilot fly planes for large carriers fully. Autopilot works really well, except those one-off instances where a human is far more likely to make a better judgement call than automous systems.
We just aren't at parity with good, mindful drivers, yet.
The introduction of semi-autonomoua systems is a downgrade in many cases for the safety of drivers and passengers, regardless of how they think.