Eleanor Holmes Norton ‘kills’ driverless car

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) was invited Tuesday, along with fellow members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, to test drive — er, test ride — a driverless car on the Capitol grounds.

Well, the ride never happened, because Norton did a particularly good job of testing the car’s bright-red “kill” button — which, as captured by WRC-TV’s cameras, killed the car to the point that it could not proceed with the test ride.

“Oh, no, don’t push it!” an engineer from Carnegie Mellon University cried after Norton pounded the mushroom button. “It shuts everything down.”

Norton said in a statement that she believes “driverless cars have a future as soon as they can be measured by the same safety standards we apply to traditional vehicles” — no mention of whether those standards should include a big button rendering those cars useless.

Perhaps she will address the matter during a scheduled appearance Wednesday night on “The Colbert Report.”