I've got a new op-ed out today at National Review. I suspect those of you with more technical chops (and legal chops) could help add texture to my perspective and I welcome your feedback. If you like the piece, I'd appreciate any shares you can offer.

Self-Driving Cars Will Save Many Lives | National Review

The black Mercedes-Benz sped south on L.A.’s La Brea Avenue at, allegedly, more than 90 miles per hour. Despite heavy cross traffic and a clear red light in its path, nothing in its operating system prompted the vehicle to slow, let alone stop, as it approached the intersection with Slauson Avenue. At 1:40 p.m. the Mercedes struck Asherey Ryan’s westbound car with such force that it was plowed 50 feet from the spot of the collision, instantaneously bursting into flames. Ryan; her boyfriend, Reynold Lester; her one-year-old son, Alonzo; and her unborn child were all killed. Two other people, traveling in a different vehicle, were killed as well. Eight more were injured. The driver of the Mercedes is, the Los Angeles Times reported, now facing six counts of murder and five counts of gross vehicular manslaughter.

As we consider a future full of self-driving cars, we ought to remember tragedies like the August 4 collision at La Brea and Slauson. The operating system responsible for it was not an autonomous program devised by Mercedes computer scientists. It was the human being sitting in the driver’s seat.

As happens around 100 times each day in America, a car’s human driver had caused a fatal collision. Due to distraction, inebriation, incapacitation, malice, or just plain incompetence, human drivers caused collisions resulting in the deaths of more than 40,000 people in the United States last year, the highest number of roadway fatalities recorded in more than a decade according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) statistics. With 2021’s troubling uptick, the cumulative number of Americans killed by motor vehicles has climbed to well over 4 million since we first put cars on our roads over a century ago. In 94 percent of roadway collisions, the NHTSA says, drivers are to blame.

Self-driving cars offer hope that this seemingly endless series of tragedies might come to an end (or something close to it). Where human drivers succumb to physical and psychologi...

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