While more than half of Americans
have favorable opinions about self-driving vehicles, most believe that humans
are still better drivers than automated technology, say University of Michigan
researchers.
The same goes for those in
Australia and the United Kingdom, although residents there are less concerned
about safety, security and privacy issues associated with autonomous vehicles.
Brandon Schoettle and Michael
Sivak of the U-M Transportation Research Institute surveyed more than 1,500
American, Australian and British residents about their views regarding limited
and completely self-driving vehicles.
They found that roughly 57
percent of respondents from all three countries have positive opinions about
automated technology in vehicles (compared to about 14 percent with negative
views) and a majority have high expectations about its benefits. More than 70
percent believe that self-driving vehicles will result in fewer crashes,
reduced severity of crashes and better fuel economy.
Even still, nearly three-fourths
of Americans and two-thirds of Australians and British are moderately or very
concerned about self-driving vehicle performance compared to human drivers.
More than three-fourths of all respondents are very or moderately concerned
about the safety consequences of equipment or system failure and about fully
autonomous vehicles getting confused by unexpected situations.
In addition, roughly two-thirds
are very or moderately concerned about system and vehicle security (from hackers),
data privacy (location and destination tracking), system performance in poor
weather, and interacting with other vehicles, pedestrians and bicyclists.
Despite high levels of concern
with self-driving technology, about two-thirds of the survey respondents say
they are at least slightly, if not very, interested in owning and/or driving
autonomous vehicles. Although a majority are not willing to pay extra for the
technology, a quarter of Americans said they would pay at least $2,000 extra,
while a quarter of Australians and British would pay at least $2,350 and
$1,710, respectively.
"Motorists and the general
public in all three countries surveyed, while expressing high levels of concern
about riding in vehicles equipped with this technology, feel positive about
self-driving vehicles, have optimistic expectations of the benefits and
generally desire self-driving vehicle technology when it becomes
available," Schoettle said.