Seven years after Google started developing robocars, 13 months after a Florida man died in a Tesla Model S that was driving itself, and almost a year after self-driving Ubers started picking up passengers in Pennsylvania, Congress might actually start regulating autonomous vehicles. Nearly everyone working on this emerging technology, from automakers to the tech companies to the government watchdogs, agrees that it's about time. The robocars scurrying about places like Austin and Boston and San Francisco operate under a mélange of state and local rules that lay down different requirements and appease myriad special interests. And if this patchwork persists, bringing these cars to the market could be a major headache. Last week, the Senate published bipartisan principles outlining what the legislation might look like.