I lost power steering every day during the winter in my old car, when the engine stalled while coasting through a particular intersection, and I was busy re-starting it and negotiating the turn.

It's amazing how much more reliable cars have gotten. You used to be always on the alert for some critical function to fail spontaneously, and also listening for warning signs.

Is that more or less dangerous than being complacent with a vehicle that 'never goes wrong', then suddenly fails, I wonder?

I'm pretty sure that driving a car that has to be restarted in the middle of an intersection is more dangerous.

Safer than the car that shuts off in the middle of the highway due to a software update?

One other thing I remember is that you were always on the alert for the car in front of you suddenly bricking itself, due to a "hardware update."

I'd look at the accident stats, which I honestly don't know. But my hunch is that the newer cars are safer.

I had flaky power steering on an old Lexus LS400, and it would stop working for minutes at a time, more or less at random. At 40mph, I could generally tell that it wasn’t working but there was no meaningful extra difficulty when steering. At 15-20mph it was quite a bit harder to steer. At 5mph, it took some real force to steer. At parking speeds, it was very hard to make the large wheel movements needed to park. At a full stop it was almost impossible.

In general, this wasn’t especially hazardous, since I rarely needed to move the wheel very far while moving at very low speed in a place where other cars could be a hazard.

(Yes, I got this fixed. And the old LS400 cars were extremely well designed and built.)

In most situations a rudder is very, very gentle on the hands. You rarely have to crank down hard.

Did you mean tiller? These are hardly found on larger ships. I still like them for how much better you feel sail balance.

I’ve only used a tiller when I was learning to sail. Since then I’ve only used larger ships with a wheel as the helm. You’re absolutely right that a tiller is an order of magnitude easier still.

The amount you turn the wheel is identical [0] with or without power steering, unless perhaps you have one of the weird variable turn ratio systems. In a conventional power steering system, the steering wheel is linked to the wheels, and the power steering applies torque to help you turn the wheel but does not change the relationship between the steering wheel and the wheels.

[0] Almost identical. The steering has some flex, and the amount it flexes is related to how much torque you apply. But this is a tiny effect.

My comment was explicitly about how physically difficult it was to turn the wheel. I had to crank it over far as well, in order to get off the highway.