Cultural attachment to cars impeding driverless vehicle adoption, survey suggests
Written by James Orme Tue 1 Oct 2019
Motorists embracing adaptive cruise control and advanced automatic emergency braking but not willing to give up grip on the wheel
Motorists are not ready to take their hands off the wheel and surrender control to driverless cars, research by the AA suggests.
The British motoring association has found that while many people see the benefits, such as improved mobility for the elderly and disabled, the cultural attachment to cars is stronger than technology and the issue of trust in autonomous vehicles remains a concern.
Only a quarter of drivers (23 percent) in a poll of 21,039 people indicated they would trust a vehicle to drive itself while they were in it.
AA president Edmund King has warned that technological pioneers should not just make fully autonomous cars their utopia without bringing drivers with them on the journey.
“We shouldn’t underestimate the cultural importance of the car,” he said.
“We shouldn’t take a Luddite approach to new driverless car technology but must bring the consumers with us.
“Even with the projected growth of ride hailing, connected and driverless cars, almost half can never envisage a time when they might give up their car.”
Almost nine in 10 (87 percent) people expressed the most amount of concern over the possibility of situations coming up that were not anticipated by software programmers developing autonomous technology.
However, motorists appear to be embracing some technological advances, with 59 percent saying they desired adaptive cruise control and 58 percent wanting advanced automatic emergency braking.
“The car has been pretty much the same for 100 years, but the next decade will see more change than in the previous 50 years,” Mr King said.
“There is no doubt technological advances can and will save lives and enhance mobility for the elderly, disabled and the young.
“The jury is still out on when, or if, the consumer will embrace the driverless car in the way they have grown to love driving their cars.”
Written by James Orme Tue 1 Oct 2019