Skip to main content

Most people want to keep their cars away from full self-driving, study says

Americans and their cars are a tight-knit relationship that goes back to the Model T and in some cases, it is a love story. Some of us love the feel of the road and the symbiotic relationship between human beings and machines. What about when the autonomous machine takes over and we are reduced to nothing more than freight?  That is what SAE International wanted to know in a poll conducted over 18 months.

SAE had a series of demo days in Los Angeles, Tampa, Detroit, and Babcock Ranch, Florida, where 1,400 respondents took pre- and post-ride questionnaires answering a variety of questions about brand, mobility, and consumer preference. Two-thousand self-driving vehicle rides were given over the course of the study. Participants experienced Level 3 and Level 4 driving features such as the vehicle starting, stopping, accelerating, and decelerating on its own. The vehicle systems were from AutonomouStuff, Perrone Robotics or Dataspeed Inc. on closed courses with a driver in place for safety intervention only.

Recommended Videos

The results were made public on November 5 via a statement; a brief overview of the release read, “The sentiment of those who rode in AVs during the SAE Demo Days largely contradicts the findings from recent surveys that indicate continuing latent distrust and even expanding lack of confidence in automated-driving technology.” Basically, the findings were that 73% of respondents want to be able to share control of the vehicle. Further, 92% say it is paramount that there be an emergency switch to disengage the system and be able to take control.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Overall, respondents think that a self-driving car is going to reduce accidents and save lives and 76% believe that the experience was similar to or even superior to human-driven experiences they have had. Americans, however, are going to have a hard time letting go of that steering wheel and turning their trust to artificial intelligence. Automakers are pouring millions into the technology and as one generation dwindles, the next generation will likely embrace the emerging technology — just like when we left the horse on the farm or started to trust cruise control. The question is, how soon will it happen?

John Elkin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Worked for many off road and rally and sports car publications throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Decided to go look for a…
To reach level 4 autonomy, these self-driving cars head to winter boot camp
Sensible 4 winter driving

Is there a more magical seasonal sight than snowflakes falling on banks of snow under a white sky, the only bursts of color to break up the merry scene being a jolly holly bush or a Christmas robin hopping across the top of a frozen fence? Maybe not if you’re a human. If you’re a self-driving car, on the other hand, that scene is pretty darn terrifying.

Autonomous vehicles are increasingly great at parsing street scenes and safely navigating according to either camera images or bounced Lidar inputs. Unfortunately, snow is an issue for both cameras and laser scanners due to noise (read: falling snow) blocking the sensors, and white-out conditions preventing the camera from seeing surroundings properly.

Read more
Uber gives up on developing its own self-driving car
Uber self-driving car

Uber has announced it's selling its self-driving car unit, although it isn’t entirely cutting its interest in autonomous vehicles.

The company will sell its autonomous-vehicle unit -- Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) -- to Aurora, a Silicon Valley-based company founded in 2017 by former contributors to self-driving-car projects operated by Google (now Waymo) and Uber.

Read more
This self-driving racing car could have done with a driver
watch this self driving racing car slam straight into a wall roborace accident

No one ever said building an autonomous car would be easy.

While a number of companies have certainly made incredible progress with the technology over the last decade or so, some are clearly faring better than others.

Read more