Gwendolyn Sobkowiak | staff writer

So I’m actually a bit anti-tech in my day-to-day life. I’m the kind of girl who had a Walkman in high school. I’ve been trying to convince my friend group to throw out their smartphones and switch to sliding keyboard BlackBerrys since I started developing a frontal lobe.

It’s not that I’m not amazed by the unprecedented technological advancements that have taken place in the last 25 years, but I’m definitely skeptical of this seeming mass lust for turning everything we interact with into a robot. I don’t like Amazon delivery drones, and even the cutesy digital cat waiters at the Southside soup dumpling place kind of give me the creeps. Part of the fun of life are those tiny, snippet interactions that compose our day, and automating the world doesn’t really seem to be making my life much better.

With this in mind, it may be a shock to hear that I’m in full support of autonomous vehicles. Yes, the much-hated “cat killing” Waymo, Google’s self-driving project that’s been making the rounds in neighborhoods near you, isn’t one of the modern tech ideas that I’m boycotting.

It’s a surreal concept, the idea of sitting relaxed in the front seat of a moving vehicle, trusting an unseen software to shuttle you seamlessly from one busy intersection to the next. But it’s a future that I see real merit in.

For starters, it’s not just because I hate driving. Let’s be real, driving can be a lot of fun, especially if you’re not trying to go through South Oakland on your daily commute or navigating the inevitable Fort Pitt tunnel pile-up. It’s freeing to be in control of your vehicle, to have the open road ahead of you and your hand(s) on the wheel.

It’s been a staple of American society for almost 100 years now. For most of us, it’s been a major part of our lives since we were old enough to get our paws on a license.

But the truth is, for as much as we love it, the sheer number of deaths that are caused by car accidents yearly should give us all pause. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, most recently reported 40,901 people killed in motor vehicle crashes in 2023 alone. Motor vehicle crashes rank as the 11th leading cause of death in the United States, and they’re ranked as the No. 1 cause of accidental death.

If you’ve done any reading on the debate, these statistics aren’t anything new to you. Anyone who’s attended high school has received at least a seminar or two on the dangers of distracted or drunk driving.

We know the risks that exist, so those of us with any sense wear our seatbelts and set a designated driver before we head to the bar. 

The thing is, though, that intoxicated driving only accounts for about a third of all deaths related to car accidents. Plenty more result from speeding, fatigue or even just poor judgment. We’re not infallible, and putting us in charge of a two-ton vehicle doesn’t always lead to the best results.

I’m not saying robots are unfailing, but they’re notoriously precise. Think about a road system with coordinated vehicles, each one signaling internally to the next about its movements. Better yet, program the cars to be more defensive, to make their decisions with the utmost care possible. Programs don’t generally try to whip the Pittsburgh highways at 90 mph, and they’re never going to pound a six-pack of IC Lights before heading off on their merry way. It’s a safer, Utopian vision to say the least.

This isn’t to say that I think these cars are without their own failings. Sending autonomous cars out at this stage of testing without any way of overriding the controls is ridiculous and, honestly, hazardous. I’ve seen the countless articles and posts expounding on this point since the start of this practice: Cars mired in fully demarcated wet cement, complaints of firefighters having to physically bang on the windshield to stop the cars from proceeding into fire zones, and emergency vehicles blocked as the cars fail to move safely out of their way. I’ve heard personal accounts, too, of run-ins with automatic cars locking items inside of trunks and driving off. It’s terrifying to not have someone that you could hopefully shake some sense into when something goes wrong.

Since 2019, there have been more than 3,979 crashes involving autonomous vehicles. 83 people have died in these accidents, according to mandatory reporting by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The more self-driving cars we see, the more this number will increase. That number can seem scary but what matters really is the comparison to the statistics as they stand.

Driverless cars are the ultimate goal, but for this vision of safety to be truly actualized it requires all cars on the road being fully driverless. At least the cars signaling to one another would function best if it were that way. Giving your random Uncle Jim the ability to take control of the wheel and do as he pleases would really just throw a wrench in the system of predictable coordination that the cars would be operating under.

More testing needs to be done on these models, with qualified and vigilant drivers supervising the car’s movements. It may sound like a boring job, sitting behind the wheel and paying attention to the road while still being shuttled around, but it’s one that could have a massive payoff.

Gwendolyn Sobkowiak can be reached at sobkowiakg@duq.edu