Autonomous vehicles
The first op tion reads: ‘Read more about autonomy in the news.’
Although 14 people would feel more comfortable being driven be an autonomous vehicle than before the pandemic, 12 would feel less comfortable, whilst 89 remain unchanged in opinion. For the people who would feel more comfortable, just under half said that this change in opinion was due to the reduced risk of infection, from any pathogen, while 42% would feel more at ease after having researched or read around the topic. However, the next 2 results truly represent the societal challenge that the autonomous industry faces. For the people who would feel less comfortable, a third said that this was because of reading/researching into self-driving cars. But for the for the people who had an unchanged opinion, 69% said that this was due to: human drivers being safer than a computer; not trusting the algorithms and/or software; the threat of the vehicle being hacked. This is clear enough evidence to suggest that a significant portion of the 115 respondents would not purchase an autonomous vehicle. A statistic which manufacturers desperately need to overturn in order to create a profit and implement an autonomous network.
The fifth option reads: ‘Using a device (whether it be a phone, computer...)’
The sixth op tion reads: ‘Talking to people in the same vehicle’
The final objective for the survey was to determine if self-driving cars posed a threat to the passengers, as well as others around the vehicle. Specifically, if humans would become too reliant on this new technology and misuse the product. It is famously documented that when airbags were first introduced in cars, people assumed that you did not have to wear a seat belt as a result (resulting in more deaths and injuries). Even though level 5 autonomy states that no human intervention or attention is needed, manufacturers will most likely require the user to be able to take control of the vehicle at any time (for legal and liability purposes). The final question of the survey was to judge the general level of awareness a passenger would have when being driven by assessing the activities they would partake in. 47 people would be sleeping, and assuming that they would do the same if they were a passenger in a self-driving car, this would clearly be a problem. If a human were needed to quickly take over in an emergency, someone who is asleep would clearly fail to react in time. As for the 76 people who would be using a device for any reason, we do not know the level of attention or awareness they would have, so these figures must be taken with a pinch of salt. But if a person was immersed in their device, they equally would not react in time when seconds can be the difference between a near-miss or a fatal collision.
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