Self-driving car deaths raise the question: Is society ready for us to take our hands off the wheel?

The self-driving car era, such as it is, has not gotten off to an auspicious start.

Not long ago, technology and automobile companies were talking as though the time was just around the corner when human drivers would be sharing the road with cars and trucks barreling along the highways under machine control, while their occupants read, worked or snoozed. Transportation companies were agitating for government regulators to take the restraints off experimental vehicles for tests on crowded urban streets and busy freeways.

But on March 18, an Arizona woman was killed by