It long has been an article of faith among high-tech advocates, especially those in the auto industry, that self-driving vehicles soon will be the standard because such systems are not subject to the human distractions that underlie most vehicle crashes.

}That confidence largely has been met by an equal amount of skepticism by most drivers, who understand the infinite variables inherent in driving and doubt the ability of any technology to deal with all of them.

Thursday, that skepticism was borne out when Tesla recalled 362,000 of its cars equipped with self-driving systems. It acted after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that the system increased rather than diminished the risk of collisions.

Missy Cummings, Ph.D., an NHTSA engineer specializing in autonomous systems, issued a report six months ago after studying 400 vehicle crashes involving autonomous systems including Tesla’s Autopilot and General Motors’ Super Cruise. She discovered that when people using such systems die or are injured in crashes, they are more likely to have been speeding than people who were driving without such systems.

The reason, she said, is that people tend to over-trust the technology. She urged the government to preclude marketing the technology as “hands-free.”

Research into autonomous vehicles has produced valuable technology to assist drivers, such as lane-change warnings and automatic emergency braking. It’s clear, though, that regulators should preclude fully autonomous driving until the industry can prove that it truly is safe.

— Tribune News Service