A good analysis. The stated vigilance problem is well known, actually, but it is ignored, supposedly in the hope that humankind is on a progressive path to fully autonomous self-driving, and that we need this phase of experimentation to advance technology.

Completely autonomous self-driving cars (without any steering wheel, so even incapacitated or clueless people may 'drive' (like drunk or in labour or children)) indeed seem like a good solution. (Except we need less individual traffic for env reasons.) Unfortunately, the problem is very hard, technologically, and the current interim solutions will stay for a while.