The building blocks for autonomous cars are already here, but so far the biggest step into that world for actual consumers has been Tesla’s . Now General Motors is going there too with a semiautonomous highway driving feature called Super Cruise, available on the new . Questions about how it stacks up to Autopilot will be endless, so I’ll get this out of the way first: Super Cruise is not quite as capable as Autopilot, but it’s objectively safer.

A coterie of semi-autonomous products are set to hit the road in the coming months, with General…

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Trust me, I know. I recently spent a dozen hours driving across four states in a new CT6, with most of time spent on the highway, the only domain for Super Cruise.

(: Cadillac flew me from New York City to Cleveland, put me up in opulent hotels for three days, provided food and drinks, and paid for gas throughout the trip—all so I could try the Super Cruise system myself and not rely on the input from writers who aren’t me.)

By safer, to be clear, it’s a minor take. Super Cruise is like having a high school teacher sitting in front of you, telling to keep your eyes forward throughout class. Look away for a moment, and a red line starts blinking in your face.

With Autopilot, which , the safety warnings that ask a driver to resume control of the wheel are prevalent, but I quickly found I was able to frequently wander and gaze about the road without issue.

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With Super Cruise, I quickly realized I had to look ahead no matter what.

So, Super Cruise is not so much as much as it’s a helpful driving companion that’ll help familiarize consumers with the technology and illustrate the benefits that come from autonomous tech. Most drivers are generally weirded out about autonomous driving features——and one of the simplest ways to help familiarize people with the technology is through baby steps. And that’s what Super Cruise is: a tip-toe along the path toward full autonomy.

The auto shows this month may have been nothing short of a driverless-tech wonderland, but…

That’s not to understate the significance of what Super Cruise accomplishes, and GM knows it’s something to champion. The automaker has, over the last several weeks, sent a Cadillac team on a coast-to-coast trip to show off the new CT6.

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I don’t want to belabor the Tesla comparisons, but the tech-heavy CT6 should make for a stellar competitor to the Model S if you find yourself buying a car purely for the driver aids. A Super Cruise-equipped CT6 with the Premium Luxury Trim , a few thousand dollars shy of .

That’s all fine on paper; here’s what Super Cruise is like on the road.

How It Works

Cadillac’s proudly calling Super Cruise the first “true hands-free” driving feature on the road today—and that’s one way it differentiates from from competitors. Tesla’s Autopilot and others require drivers to shimmy the steering wheel a tad to signal they’re still paying attention.

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That’s one aspect where Super Cruise sets itself apart. To make it work, Cadillac engineers plopped a face-detection camera along the top of the steering wheel that’s always monitoring your face.

Why Now

GM has been working on Super Cruise for a long time, and with automakers pouring billions into developing self-driving technology, it’s no surprise that a sudden crush of vehicles are set to have semi-automated features.

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Is Super Cruise better than Autopilot? Depends on what you want, I suppose. Tesla recommends only using the Autosteer function on highways with a center divide and clear lane markings; as I quickly realized over the summer, though it can be used in off-highway environments, whatsoever.

But in the recommended highway scenario, Autopilot was just as relaxing and comfortable to use as Super Cruise. Personally, I prefer the auto-lane change function; that seems like a feature that’s entirely subjective, though.

Both make long-distance treks far easier to handle. When you can accept—and it’s definitely hard—that the car’s capable of handling most of the highway driving, so long as you’re paying attention, you’ll find that lengthy drives aren’t so tiresome.

Many of us who love to drive are concerned what place we’ll have as technology like this becomes more common. But even if you love driving, I see the advantages in helping with some of the most boring and monotonous aspects of operating a car, like endlessly long freeway drives. The CT6 is a fun and powerful machine. Giving the driver some aid on long road trips doesn’t take away from that.

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Also, being that this is GM—inherently a much larger company than Tesla—it’s not hard to imagine the tech will trickle down into other models soon. (They haven’t said yet, for the record.) So Super Cruise and its variants could very well be most people’s first real experience with semi-autonomous cars, rather than the tech-forward first adopters who tend to go for Teslas.

Where GM succeeded here is that Super Cruise worked as it was marketed, besides the small glitch I found. In an environment where or slowly becoming accustomed to autonomous tech, that’s a good thing.

I can’t say how many customers Cadillac will win over because of the system, but it shows that GM’s serious about having a stake in an automotive future that cedes more control to automation.