While that CHP officer that died in one of the Toyota unintended acceleration crashes apparently was too panicked to shift into neutral, I want to take exception to your specific example. Do I want a driver who never even bothered to ask themselves what the lower gears were for?
We all want the best drivers and pilots, but all the drivers or pilots have to pass an exam, if there is no fraud then all the drivers and pilots that are licensed are capable to operate the vehicles and you can't demand that only race/rally drivers and military grade pilots would operate this machines.
Anyway the fact that the pilot could have done more or not is a completely unrelated topic with all Boeing issues, MCAS or non-MCAS. I will patiently wait for the full reports, I hope there will be record on how did Boeing decided to make the warning that the sensors are malfunctioning a paid DLC, who was the person that decided or what were the procedures that decided that a malfunction warning should not be the default.
