The role of human operators in safety perception of AV deployment—insights from a large European survey

Kyriakidis, Miltos (author), Sodnik, Jaka (author), Stojmenova Pečečnik, Kristina (author), Elvarsson, Arnór B. (author), Pronello, Cristina (author), Thomopoulos, Nikolas (author)

Autonomous vehicles are anticipated to play an important role on future mobility offering encouraging solutions to today’s transport problems. However, concerns of the public, which can affect the AVs’ uptake, are yet to be addressed. This study presents relevant findings of an online survey in eight European countries. First, 1639 responses were collected in Spring 2020 on people’s commute, preferred transport mode, willingness to use AVs and demographic details. Data was analyzed for the entire dataset and for vulnerable road users in particular. Results re-confirm the long-lasting discourse on the importance of safety on the acceptance of AVs. Spearman correlations show that age, gender, education level and number of household members have an impact on how people may be using or allowing their children to use the technology, e.g., with or without the presence of a human supervisor in the vehicle. Results on vulnerable road users show the same trend. The elderly would travel in AVs with the presence of a human supervisor. People with disabilities have the same proclivity, however their reactions were more conservative. Next to safety, reliability, affordability, cost, driving pleasure and household size may also impact the uptake of AVs and shall be considered when designing relevant policies.

• Language: English
• Keywords: safety, automated driving vehicles, automated road users, vulnerable road users, user preferences, supervision, privacy, reliability, sustainability
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FE - Faculty of Electrical Engineering
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2020
• Number of pages: 24 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 12, iss. 21, art. 9166
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-134474
• UDC: 004:629.072
• ISSN on article: 2071-1050
• DOI: 10.3390/su12219166
• COBISS.SI-ID: 36424963
• Publication date in RUL: 17.01.2022

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Sustainability
• Publisher: MDPI
• ISSN: 2071-1050
• COBISS.SI-ID: 5324897

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.
• Licensing start date: 04.11.2020

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: varnost, vozila za avtomatizirano vožnjo, ranljivi udeleženci v cestnem prometu, uporabniške nastavitve, nadzor, zasebnost, zanesljivost, trajnost

Projects

• Funder: Other - Other funder or multiple funders
• Funding programme: COST
• Project number: CA16222
• Acronym: WISE-ACT