It’s the future we were long promised, right? Sitting back, relaxed in your car, not really watching the road and letting the vehicle do the driving for you. The goal is to take the stress out of driving … the tech allows the car to cruise and perform stopping and lane changes while the driver relaxes attentively. But the reality of some of the most popular systems is very different: Crashes, lawsuits and even deaths have sparked a debate of just how safe these systems can be for owners to use.

According to Cars.com, three of the biggest automakers in the world make some of the most well-known hands-free driving tech on the market. Each one has its own set of issues. While everyone from Hyundai to Lexus has some sort of hands-free driving-assistance tech available in their cars, the most well-known and sophisticated systems come from Ford, GM and Tesla.

Tesla likely has the most controversial hands-free driving systems, Full-Self Driving and Autopilot, and likes to tout that the systems make driving its vehicles safer. To back up this claim, the company has been releasing a quarterly vehicle safety report every year since 2018 that purports to show that over millions of miles driven by owners using Autopilot, the system has a low instance of crashes when engaged.

Ford is a leader in the industrywide push to automate driving. Its BlueCruise driving system promises to keep a car in its lane, manage its speed and slow it down upon approaching another vehicle, without the driver’s hands on the steering wheel. The Wall Street Journal reports that many drivers have found the technology behind BlueCruise confusing to use, according to driver statements, crash reports and Ford’s research. Some haven’t understood the product’s limitations, while others haven’t heeded the system’s warnings to take control of the car—or haven’t had time to.

Ford has long known about the dangers and told the Journal that it took steps to improve BlueCruise before rolling it out, such as by refining graphics on the vehicle dashboard and the messaging used to alert drivers, “to further improve the driver’s understanding of their responsibility.” But after two deadly crashes in 2024, federal regulators are looking into whether the technology is still posing problems for drivers.

Car manufacturers insist that if drivers pay attention, the automated-driving technology is safer than driving unassisted. But perhaps the fundamental problem is that when you let computers do much of the work for you, our human instinct is to relax and take our eyes off the proverbial road for too long.

The men leading the agencies central to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown appeared before lawmakers Tuesday for the first time since federal officers killed two Minnesotans, taking heat over the raids that are generating growing backlash from the public. House panel members grilled the officials on their agencies' heavy-handed tactics.

The testimony also came as Congress battles over Democratic demands to reform ICE practices, with funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) set to lapse Friday if lawmakers don’t reach a deal. Axios reports that it wasn’t just the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were both shot dead in Minneapolis in January, that the agency heads had to answer for, but a broader pattern of use of force incidents. “You are supposed to be making people safer, instead your agents are being unnecessarily violent,” said Rep. Seth Magaziner (of Rhode Island). “And that is why the Trump administration has lost the trust of the American people on immigration.”

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott took much of the heat. Scott highlighted the low border crossing numbers and the work of the men and women of CBP. Lyons pushed back on those who label ICE officers “Gestapo or secret police.” He declined to apologize to the families of Good and Pretti, instead saying “I welcome the opportunity to speak to the family in private … but I'm not going to comment on any active investigation.”

Britney Spears, the queen of millennial-era pop music, has become the latest artist to sell her entire music catalog. Her song rights were acquired by Primary Wave, a New York-based music and marketing company that specializes in these kind of catalog deals. The news was first reported earlier on Tuesday by TMZ.

Details of the transaction were unclear, including the price and exactly what rights were transferred. Variety says it’s safe to assume that Spears’ artist royalties and publishing rights were included in the deal. There are any number of options for exploitation of the catalog, including the forthcoming biopic based on her memoir “The Woman in Me,” which landed at Universal Pictures in 2024. A jukebox musical based on her hits, “Once Upon a One More Time,” premiered on Broadway in 2023.

The catalog market was already bubbling a few years ago when Bob Dylan sold his songwriting rights for more than $300 million, but since then it has maintained a steady boil. High-profile artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Shakira, Justin Bieber and Justin Timberlake have sold their catalogs. Springsteen sold his songs to Sony in 2021 for $500 million, and that company purchased Queen’s catalog for more than $1 billion in 2024.