It'd be an interesting – a revelatory – thing to see how many of us would choose to pay extra for the "assistance" that's being effectively forced on us by making it standard. Often well in advance of federal mandates.

For instance, many late-model vehicles already come with automated emergency braking (AEB) which isn't a federal requirement – yet. It will be, come 2029. So why do some many late-model vehicles already have AEB? Arguably, to get people used to it before they have to get used to it. This is the method used by the Tech Creeps – my term for the people who are using "technology" to systematically take control over everything, not just the brakes (and steering) of vehicles. They envision a future in which "tech" – meaning, those who control the tech – controls everything and so (ipso facto) we control nothing, save perhaps our bodily functions.

No doubt they are working on ways to control that also.

VW has some "assistance" on deck. It includes "assistance" making lane changes. Because – apparently – it is either too challenging to change lanes oneself, which is of a piece with parking "assistance" – or because it takes too much effort to execute the maneuver oneself. Actually, it is neither of those things. It is training people to get used to and even need such things. To obtain their passive acceptance of the inevitability of becoming a passenger in the left seat. It is the only intelligent explanation. After all, a driver who actually needs "assistance" changing lanes is a driver who ought not to be driving. Imagine putting someone in the left seat of an airplane who required "assistance" with taxiing the airplane to te correct runway; would you trust such a clown to get the plane in the air – and safely back on the ground again? Would you get into the plane with such a "pilot"? More to the point, the FAA would never sanction such a "pilot" getting into the left seat.

Pilots are expected to know how to taxi – and of course, to fly.

Yes, of course, there is autopilot and other such but these are not the same things as "technologies" that obviate basic competencies such as changing lanes or parking curbside. (The same goes for older "technologies" such as the hill-holder clutch that obviates the once-necessary basic competence people had to acquire of operating the clutch and gas pedal in syncopation so as to neither stall the car nor roll back into the car behind you when getting going from a dead stop on an incline in a car with a manual transmission.)

Well, VW – and it's not just VW – asserts the need to "assist" drivers (sic) who are either too inept or too lazy to change lanes themselves. Just turn the adaptive cruise control on and – per the billboards in They Live – got to sleep. And there's more!  "Select vehicles add a rearview camera system capable of detecting pedestrians, while VW offers a subscription data service on the ID. Buzz electric van to boost performance of the vehicle's ADAS," says Ward's Automotive.