For context, I was a private yacht chef for 7 years. On long legs of a trip I had to hold watch at the helm for 3 or 4 hour shifts while everyone else rested for their watch. Staying awake while using auto pilot was a special type of mental anguish.
Definitely slept a bit while doing night passage (alcohol). Would be impossible in a car given how much driver monitoring is out there.
I wouldn't feel safe if I wasn't listening to something that kept me engaged though. I would totally nod off.
I was excited to get adaptive cruise control, but I’ve found I don’t like using it very much. It’s too aggressive with hitting the breaks to maintain the following distance instead of being able to ease off the gas to fall back like a human driver would. Assume some brands are better at this than others, but anyway I didn’t buy a Mazda to not drive it. So I use that only intermittently for long drives as a bit of a break for my right foot.
> Coast Guard helicopter with a mounted machine gun pointed at me and a Coast Guard response (defender class) boat with a .50-caliber machine gun also fixed on me while they sat off our bow.
Why'd they do that?
> they said I should hold my position and not move.
Why?
> The sub came out with two large ships on each side with blast shields on the each ship.
...why?
Safety and security. A small boat can be a threat and cause damage to a larger boat if you let it get close enough. Small boats can easily capsize if they get too close to a larger boat.
When a $2,000,000,000 Ohio class submarine carrying ballistic missiles is most vulnerable leaving port moving towards water deep enough to dive in. The Coast Guard is tasked with keeping all potential threats away. The ships on the side would protect the submarine from RPG and similar attacks while the submarine is surfaced.