By Katherine Anne Long From The Seattle Times Tech-industry experts, city planners and even Gov. Jay Inslee have touted self-driving cars as a panacea, cutting congestion and vehicle emissions while reducing collisions. But an announcement last Monday from Amazon’s self-driving car unit Zoox that it will soon start testing its autonomous vehicles in downtown Seattle drew criticism from transportation-safety advocates. The early promise of the technology, they said, has been overshadowed by a string of crashes and near-misses, due in part to lax oversight of the rapidly growing sector. “A lot of people have bought into the hype of self-driving cars, that they’ll cure the tradeoff between safety and speed,” said former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, now the director of pedestrian advocacy group America Walks. “But safety requires moving slowly and stopping at signs of danger.” “That’s been a challenge for self-driving vehicles to do in urban setting with pedestrians …
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