> However, it still doesn't serve a valuable purpose for me yet. I can't take my eyes off the road or my hands off the wheel.
Agree - it doesn’t allow me to open a laptop and get something else useful done. In that sense, it’s not returning any time to me.
But to me, it feels much the same as cruise control: it removes a set of monotonous tasks that take up some part of my brain. When I’m not needing to keep a car between lane lines and react immediately to the car ahead slowing down, I’m getting free cycles to look other places. I’m finding I spend a lot more time looking in the mirrors, looking much further ahead down the road, etc. I’m quite sure that me + FSD is safer than just me driving, simply because I’m looking much further ahead and behind. It turns driving into less of a tactical activity and more strategic.
It feels almost like being a passenger for a new driver. You can be pretty sure they aren’t going to just dive out of the lane and kill you, so you can look far ahead for anything weird that might trip them up.