Editorial: Safety and the value of advancing self-driving vehicles

Imagine a day when you could enjoy one more at your local watering hole, hop in your car worry-free and get home safely.

Imagine a day when road rage is obsolete, or nearly so.

We're so troubled by the regular march of serial drunken drivers appearing in court on their third, fifth, eight DUIs. And the people who find it necessary to drive more than 100 mph on local roads, killing people in the process.

And, more commonly, those who find texting and social media updates more important than minding what other drivers and pedestrians are doing on the roads.

Driving is serious business, but too few of us view it as such.

Congress on Wednesday took another step toward a future in which self-driving cars would allow us to focus on all of the nondriving things we humans like to busy ourselves with - and leave the driving to computers that will undistractedly communicate with each other and their surroundings to get us where we need to go without endangering ourselves and others.

Technology will continue to provide us with distractions, but it also can provide us with a solution. We can overcome our own foibles by rendering them moot.

Is this a pessimistic view of human nature? Sure. But our habits don't seem to be changing much.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transporation Committee on Wednesday offered broad bipartisan support of federal legislation that would allow automakers to apply for exemptions to federal safety rules that would start the ball rolling on a future with self-driving cars.

To be sure, the technology isn't fully developed yet and neither are the rules that will regulate them. There are ethical questions to wrestle with. But this is an important step in the right direction.

Last year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a report that showed a 7.7 percent increase in motor vehicle traffic deaths from 2014 to 2015.

"As the economy has improved and gas prices have fallen, more Americans are driving more miles," Administrator Mark Rosekind said in a summary of that report. "But that only explains part of the increase. Ninety-four percent of crashes can be tied back to a human choice or error, so we know we need to focus our efforts on improving human behavior while promoting vehicle technology that not only protects people in crashes, but helps prevent crashes in the first place."

Ninety-four percent human error!

We may never find a way to keep drunks off the road, and it's unlikely we can do much to keep speeders under control, but we should take advantage of technology that makes us safer, whether we're using a steering wheel or not.