AAA Study: 73 Percent Would Be Afraid to Ride in Self-Driving Vehicle

Consumer trust in fully self-driving vehicles is on the decline, reported the American Automobile Association.

In the study:

• 73 percent of American drivers said they would be too afraid to ride in a self-driving vehicle – up from 63 percent in late 2017.
• 20 percent would trust a self-driving vehicle, while 7 percent are not sure.
• Breaking down the study’s results by age shows that more millennials are fearful of riding in a fully self-driving vehicle.
• 64 percent of millennials said they would be too afraid to ride in a fully self-driving vehicle—up from 49 percent in late 2017.

The study also asked about how safe people would feel with self-driving vehicles on the road.

• 63 percent said they would feel less safe if a self-driving vehicle was on the road while they were walking or riding a bicycle.
• 26 percent said that self-driving vehicles would make no difference in how safe they feel, while 9 percent said they would feel safer and 2 percent were not sure.

"Despite their potential to make our roads safer in the long run, consumers have high expectations for safety… our results show that any incident involving an autonomous vehicle is likely to shake consumer trust, which is a critical component to the widespread acceptance of autonomous vehicles," said Greg Brannon, AAA’s director of automotive engineering and industry relations.

Megan Foster, AAA’s director of federal affairs, said that more protection must be added for people to feel safer.

"While autonomous vehicles are being tested, there’s always a chance that they will fail or encounter a situation that challenges even the most advanced system… to ease fears, there must be safeguards in place to protect vehicle occupants and the motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians with whom they share the road," Foster said in the AAA report.

AAA will continue "ongoing, unbiased" testing of automated vehicle technologies. "Previous testing of automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, self-parking technology, and lane keeping systems has shown both great promise and great variation," the AAA report said.

The AAA survey was conducted among a total of 1,014 adults, 18 and older) living in the continental U.S. from April 5 to April 8 using randomly selected landline telephone numbers and randomly selected mobile phone numbers. The margin of error for the survey is plus or minus 4 percent, the report said.

A majority of American adults believe that driverless cars will be common within a decade, said a Gallup report.

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