Traffic jams & self driving cars

It could prove very useful for cars to be automobile only during traffic jams first. I get the impression that most traffic jams and indeed rush hour situations are caused by humans not being able to weave into traffic and not being able to react in a timely fashion (not keeping enough distance in some cases) causing a person to hit the brakes, then everyone at the rear needs to respond, etc.
I think if all cars during rush hour would be equipped with computers and the human driver would cede control to the computer, the cars would be able to safely merge into lanes with reasonable and constant speed and keeping a certain speed, being able to react rather more swiftly and effectively than any human could.