Are We Ready for Driverless Cars? No, Says UK Study
Driverless e-hailing cars are already present in certain regions in the US, where they can be seen shuttling people around town with minimal to no problems. Though such services are still quite rare, that should change with the introduction of Tesla’s robotaxis. Unlike current driverless vehicles, they don’t have actual physical steering wheel and pedals.
This shows the company’s confidence in its fully autonomous self-driving technology and how it will shape the future of public transportation. But are we ready for such technology? In the UK, a study was commissioned by HPI, a vehicle history check and valuation specialist, to figure out the perception towards driverless cars.
It polled the views of over 2,000 UK adults, which found that men are more trusting of driverless cars than women. Apparently, 28% of men were happy to use this technology compared to 16% of women. The data also showed that younger people were more trusting of it as well.
About 33% of 18-26 year olds were on board with driverless cars compared to 17% of people aged 55-64. The least trusting age group were the over 65s at 12%. That said, HPI’s research data shows that only 15% of people think that introducing driverless cars will result in safer roads. About 22% believed that driverless cars would not make a difference in terms of contributing to road safety.
When asked whether they were looking forward to the introduction of driverless cars, 24% of respondents said they were excited for it rather than fearful. Breaking down that data further, 30% of men were excited about the prospect of driverless cars compared to 18% of women.
Interestingly, 25% of men said they would consider buying a car with fully autonomous self-driving technology, which could drive itself while they slept or carried out other tasks like watching a film, reading, or attending a meeting. This number is more than double the number of women (12%) who felt the same way.
About 42% of the respondents currently drive cars with semi-autonomous features like lane assist, emergency braking, adaptive cruise control or active driving assistance. From that data, 21% of men said they use the tech all the time compared to just 6% of women. This proves that despite being helpful in certain situations, people haven’t warmed up to the tech yet.
Only one in 10 or 8% of all respondents believe that car manufacturers don’t need to conduct more research and development to convince them that driverless cars are safe for road use. This proves that many people in the UK are still skeptical of fully autonomous self-driving vehicles being safe in their current form.
Self driving cars do provide many advantages like more predictable driving behavior and safer maneuvering. Besides this, they are more likely to keep a steady speed in traffic reducing the likelihood of creating congestion due to unnecessary braking. That said, current driverless technology still fumbles when recognizing hazards or obstacles, which proves that the technology needs more time to mature.
