Cars have always held a special place in the hearts of the American public, and justifiably so. Trite as it may sound, cars symbolize freedom. They grant the freedom to go where one pleases, to feel the rush and the adrenaline of raw power and to gain independence from parents’ schedules.

Unfortunately, this romantic description leaves out the dangers of driving. As cataloged in the scathing critique of the car manufacturing industry “Unsafe at Any Speed,” cars pose real and dangerous threats to both pedestrians and passengers.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Fatality Analysis Reporting System reports that car accidents caused 32,719 fatalities in 2013. Of these, at least 5,136 were pedestrian deaths. According to another February 2015 report, 94 percent of all crashes are caused by the driver (as opposed to outside effects, such as deteriorated equipment, manufacturing defects, or wet roads).

The underlying problem is that we, as humans, make errors. Unfortunately, within the context of driving, mistakes have much higher ramifications.

We cannot re-engineer the human race to be more attentive. But there is one graceful, simple, and effective solution to human error — using self-driving cars.

The results speak for themselves. According to Google’s latest August report on their fleet of 48 self-driving cars, in the six years of their project, they have been involved in 16 accidents — all of which were incited by a human driver. And besides some eccentricities caused by an overly cautious algorithm (which is being tweaked as we speak), the car drives with all the skill of a human but without the unpredictability.

Some will argue that, rather than having completely autonomous cars, vehicles should be driver-assisted. The human will retain control of the car, but the car will take over when the human is remiss, or in accomplishing difficult tasks, such as parallel parking.

The main complaint is that self-driving cars will take away some of the thrills and freedoms of driving. As Google is wont to stay within the law, self-driving cars will strictly stay within the legal speed limit. The satisfying feeling of tearing down the freeway might be gone forever. However, the increase in safety brought about by autonomous vehicles greatly outweighs personal enjoyment.

Self-driving cars allow people who cannot drive, such as children, the impaired or the elderly, to enjoy equal privileges of  transit. Furthermore, adults who cannot safely drive, such as the exhausted, inebriated or sleep-deprived, can still safely use their car as a method of transit.

In some situations that call for judgment, a human driver can only estimate other drivers’ movements and guess a solution, which can lead to tragic miscalculations. In contrast, the computers of driverless vehicles can precisely calculate the exact acceleration, jerk and momentum of multiple objects, predict collisions, and formulate evasive actions.

Besides the natural safety exhibited by self-driving cars, if all of the cars in a society are self-driving, an even greater level of safety can be incorporated — through something called Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication (V2V), the cars can communicate with each other and build a network used in combination with sensory data, allowing for an even safer environment. As detailed in a report by the NHSTA, V2V has a number of applications, such as Blind Spot Warning and Forward Collision Warning.

Seneca was correct in his quote — “errare humanum est,” or to err is human. But often we forget the second half of his statement, which is equally, if not more, important: “perseverare autem diabolicum.” But to persist in error is diabolical. And now a way has opened for us to finally escape our shortcomings and ensure safety for driver, passenger and pedestrian alike. Why shouldn’t we take this car for a ride?