Aviation Autopilot vs Cars

An airplane using autopilot isn't seconds away from suddenly crashing.

No, they won't anymore than an autopilot that can take off, fly and land has gotten rid of pilots.

Autopilot that requires constant attention of the pilot is not really an autopilot, is it?

Airplane autopilot isn't designed to be used in the way you described. Should aviation rename that as well?

Autopilot is just autopilot. There was lot of plane crashes with autopilot involved.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLrIXptqZxw

Modern planes can land themselves - not sure about taking off. They can land in zero visibility like this. In this case the pilot is expected to double, triple, quadruple check the automated systems constantly, not just sit back and relax. The plane and airport both need special equipment. And the whole thing is a controlled closed system unlike the roads.

You are describing features available on a small minority of aircraft with autopilot features. The vast majority of aviation autopilot systems only control heading and basic flight stability.Literally the opening paragraph of Wikipedia:”An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft, marine craft or spacecraft without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilots do not replace human operators. Instead, the autopilot assists the operator'

In practice a certain amount of checking out on aircraft autopilot is arguably tolerable; the operator generally has _some_ time to react to something happening. Cars aren’t like that.

Well that's what autopilot systems are for.

Possible. What I'm saying is "the plane can do many things, but 1. won't switch modes e.g. from cruise to autoland, and 2. even so, it's just a different way of controlling the plane, it does not fly itself."