Sep 24, 2016 4 min read

The next time a fellow driver is a few centimeters from your bumper in the right lane on I-79, makes a “Pittsburgh left” as you creep into an intersection, or gazes absently at their iPhone while their foot is bearing down on the gas pedal, it’s easy to think, what the heck, with drivers this reckless, thoughtless and stupid, how bad can driverless cars actually be?

The answer? Right now, it’s really hard to say. Driverless cars could well figure prominently in how Americans get around in another couple of decades. Or, by the same token, they could end up like New Coke, Betamax video recorders or flavored bottled water for cats and dogs – flops so resounding that we look back on these endeavors with a mixture of embarrassment and mirth.

Just as Uber is testing self-driving cars on Pittsburgh streets – with human beings inside in case things go awry – the Obama administration announced federal guidelines last week for the development of automated vehicles that it believes will get the trucks, cars and buses on the road much more quickly. Not regulations that would take an epoch to actually implement, these guidelines, the administration hopes, will trump the bewildering array of state and local laws that have gone on the books as driverless vehicles are tested. Auto manufacturers like Ford gave the guidelines a thumbs up, as have Uber, fellow ride-sharing group Lyft, and Google.

In an op-ed for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, President Obama acknowledged government “sometimes gets it wrong when it comes to rapidly changing technologies. That’s why this new policy is flexible and designed to evolve with new advances. There are always those who argue that government should stay out of free enterprise entirely, but I think most Americans would agree we still need rules to keep our air and water clean, and our food and medicine safe. That’s the general principle here. What’s more, the quickest way to slam the brakes on innovation is for the public to lose confidence in the safety of new technologies.”

The administration and other proponents of driverless vehicles believe that if cars and trucks are automated, they could remove human error from the equation, and drastically reduce the number of fatalities on our roads. Last year, more than 35,000 people were killed in auto accidents in the United States. It should be noted that number is considerably reduced from 40 or 50 years ago, thanks to our roads and vehicles being better designed and equipped with more safety features, and there being much greater awareness and enforcement of drunken driving laws. But the lion’s share of the 35,000 people who perished met their end as a result of driver mistakes or negligence. While no machine is completely foolproof, onboard computer networks are arguably less prone to mishaps than distracted or heedless human beings.

Also, the argument goes, automated cars would increase the mobility of those with disabilities and the elderly who cannot pilot the vehicles we have known for the last century or so.

But even amid the sunny pronouncements and cheerful forecasts about a future where we can, in fact, take our eyes off the road, it’s hard not to keep thinking of Joshua Brown. He is the 40-year-old Ohio businessman who was killed in his driverless car in the spring while traveling in Florida. His Tesla Model S crashed into a tractor-trailer because it failed to distinguish between the white side of the truck and the sky behind it. How many more Joshua Browns will there be before the technology is perfected? How many passengers are willing to accept the risks that come with being guinea pigs?

When it comes to driverless cars, they shouldn’t get the green light or the red light, but the flashing yellow – proceed, but with great caution.