From 2018 to 2024, there were more than 278,000 motor vehicle traffic fatalities. That number will likely appear in future public policy textbooks in a section on “Mistakes in Emerging Technology Policy.” Students will learn how Congress had a chance to make autonomous vehicles far more ubiquitous as early as 2017, but passed on the opportunity. Despite clear evidence that AVs were safer than the average human driver in a myriad of contexts, two bills to support and spread AV progress failed. While those bills would not have prevented all of the subsequent deaths, hindsight makes it quite clear that introducing AVs sooner than later in more locations would have saved many lives. The policy upshot is clear: The status quo may be just as risky, if not more so, than a tech-forward future.