Sitting behind the driver’s seat

This one has to be read in context.  On the December 10, 2018 “On Point” NPR podcast, a person was discussing self-driving cars.  “I felt safer sitting in the back seat of that driver-less vehicle than I did sitting behind the driver’s seat of my own car’.  https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510053/on-point

This is a mashup of “in the driver’s seat” and “behind the wheel”, both meaning to take charge. The speaker wasn’t thinking of either idiom, but was certainly confusing his words.  If you are in the back seat of one car, how is that different than being behind the driver’s seat of the other car?  A big thanks to Alan “Moose” Richardson for hearing this one.