As General Motors continues marching toward introducing its first mass-production fully-autonomous vehicle next year, the automaker and its rivals may have some work to do first in building consumer trust.
In a recent survey, nearly half of all respondents said that they would never buy a fully-self-driving, Level 5 autonomous car. That’s up from the 30-percent of respondents who answered similarly when the same survey was conducted two years ago. And the shift isn’t just due to preference; the share of respondents who said that they believe roads would be safer if all vehicles were fully-autonomous has decreased by 18 percent over two years, and nearly 85 percent of respondents said they feel that humans should always have the option of taking the wheel, even in a fully-autonomous vehicle.
Overall, while consumer awareness of autonomous vehicle technology is up by 24 percent, according to the survey, perception of its safety is down by 20 percent.
These findings come from Cox Automotive – the parent of such resources as Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book, which also provides auto auction and vehicle wholesale services. This year’s survey relied on the responses of 1,250 automotive consumers in the United States.
“People now have a deeper understanding of the complexities involved when creating a self-driving car, and that has them reconsidering their comfort level when it comes to handing over control,” says Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book Executive Publisher Karl Brauer. As a result, a majority of survey respondents today say they’d prefer Level 2 vehicle autonomy – partial autonomy like we have today, with two or more advanced driver assist technologies working in tandem – to Level 4.
Level 4 autonomy was the preference two years ago. The label denotes a car that can complete an entire journey on its own without human intervention, but typically only within a finite geographical area or below a certain speed.
Worth noting is that Cox Automotive’s recent survey is not the first to suggest that public trust in autonomous vehicle technology is waning rather than growing. Last year, surveys from J.D. Power and Gartner, Inc. showed the same downward trend in consumers’ faith in AVs.
(Source: Automotive News)
Comments
This is just the public speaking up about how they live in fear! People are afraid of their own shadows on days! People have spent the last 40 to 50 years being sheltered and protected that they are not willing to try something new or God forsaken something dangerous! People today have weak little minds that have been conditioned to only do activities that are deemed safe. Where is the sense of adventure and I can do anything in this world! People today have really become pathetic.
As for the cars themselves, this is no different then when the pilots went crazy complaining about autopilot being installed on commercial airplanes. People are reacting to a technology that they dont understand and just like the aviation industry 30 years ago the automotive industry will go threw the same baby steps implementing autonomous vehicles. There were accidents in the beginning for the aviation industry and the autonomous vehicles will go threw the same teeth cutting. But people will find out that computers can and are better then humans at operating a airplane and cars will be no different.
So stop acting like the sky is failing and the world is going to collapse. We will be just fine riding around in autonomous vehicles just like we are perfectly fine riding in a airplane these days.
Remember flying is the safest mode of travel! It’s that way because computers control the system airplanes use to navigate the skys!
Computers are the greatest thing ever. They are perfect and never keun5……4rjewuif///.. mess jkjrkemfm,,,,,,,,
Let me get back %&&%$#^&$ to &$*%(5 you once I reboot.
That wasn’t even convincing.
Just making a point
A really stupid and bad one, too!
My aren’t you just a ray of sun shine.
Unfortunately the problem is Elon Musk and his irresponsibly naming his driver assistance program “Auto-Pilot”, which is deceiving, dangerous, and has caused at least two fatal accidents. Elon Musk’s irresponsibility in that area caused Ziv Aviram and Prof. Amnon Shashua, the co-founders of Mobileye (now part of Intel), who provided the driver assist chip to Tesla, to cut their business relationship with Musk/Tesla. Now Elon Musk seems to be determined to ruin the electric car industry by irresponsibly wanting to take Tesla back to private ownership and claim that financing was “secured” at $420 a share. Now he is under investigation by the SEC. I love the Tesla concept of the lower priced shorter range (210 mile) Model 3 for $35,000, but it can not even be ordered yet. Now Tesla is asking for an additional $2,500 from people who have ordered the long range Model 3 to “confirm” their existing orders. He has tried to grow Tesla way too fast just like his driver assistance program. I hope Tesla survives, because if they go bankrupt, that will be the end of the electric car industry for a long time, unless Apple buys them and does it right. I am so glad I bought my Chevy Bolt last year and did not wait for the Tesla Model 3 short range car and for the political climate change. Oh and Cadillac’s Super Cruise is a much more responsible way to do driver assistance development than Tesla has done.
I agree Musk has let his ambition and ego get in the way of growing and mfg Tesla.
It will not help 5be industry but we are now getting to a point the mainstream MFGs are now coming online with their own EV products.
The Porsche is not far out. jag is already out, GM has started the roll out of more models.
The EV has a lot of growth yet to come but it will take time.
As for Autonomy there are still technical, legal,civil, moral, hacking and social aspects to work out.
I just got my Autonomous Vehicle Engineering magazine from SAE today. Every issue is amazing on the advancement but still ask more questions that still need to be answered and problems to be resolved.
There was a story on the moral conflict of the owner vs programmer in deciding what to do in a case where a life and death decision is made. If a car has a choice of going over the side of the road or hitting a kid in front of the car who makes the decision on the outcome? While accidents will be reduced they will still happen.
The greatest challange is going to be to get full commitment from the public to give up the wheel.
Many years ago, the 60’s or 70’s, there were many articles and even a few test trials to come up with a smart highway system. The technology at he time was embedded sensors in the asphalt and a pickup coil in the vehicle tracking a radio signal. The technology did find a successful use in robotic warehousing. The first generation had an embedded wire in the floor and the robot following the signal went about. A fully autonomous in my book would need a third level of sensors. GPS mapping and vehicle radar systems is what is used now but as we seen not every circumstance of events can be fully recognized, at least at this time. Building a smart highway and roadway with embedded sensors would add another level of tracking and hopefully make it safer.
After the test driver fatally ran over a person crossing a street while she was looking down at her smartphone really hit home to a lot of people. Autonomous vehicles is not any safer and perhaps only easier to drive. Current technology with brake assist and lane driff avoidance schemes seem to be well accepted by most. In our new Murano when someone is in the left or right blind spot, an alarm sounds that someone is there and a few times it has helped out. The navigation program has many errors and directional errors when I’m using the Nissan system. For autonomous vehicles, how will the nav systems be certified that it is as error free as possible and by what standard of measurement.
But to just jump into the vehicle, program your destination and press enter, no way would I ever trust it.
Why wont you trust it? Do you trust the airplane flying on autopilot? Why are you living in fear?
There are thousands of airplanes flying at any point of time all over the world. But that is nothing compared to the millions of cars running on the road. Plus, add potholes, people running across the street, animals on the highway, bikes, trucks, buses, etc…. you get the picture. It is not the same one bit.
All commercial airplanes are required to be able to fly 1,000 feet apart! Do you know how that is accomplished? On board computers! And if you think 1,000 feet is a long distance then your wrong when you consider airplanes flying at 500 plus miles a hour!
You guys are going to eat your words in the future. One day we all will be ordering a car service to pick us up, then a car will show up that doesn’t have a driver.
Stop being a —— dinosaur! The future technology is coming and there is nothing you can do about it!
Actually it is the air traffic controllers that space everyone out.
They assign altitude and direction for proper spacing. The are humans in large centers around the country.
You know the Space Shuttle was originally auto land. It worked good for the first few flights. Then it happened. The landed T Edwards Air Force Base and as a specific air speed the landing gear would come Down.
Well on this landing the one thing some of the greatest minds failed to consider was a tail wind.
They came with in 3 seconds of belly landing because they came in hot and were still losing altitude.
For the rest of the Shuttle program they would fly it in and they would manually deploy the gear.
My Neighbor involved with the program told me about this and it is also detailed in a James Young’s book Forever Young and his flights including this one.
Some times Technology has to know its limits.
Being in the tech industry for 30 plus years I never trusted this. The only thing I trust in this world is myself. Self driving cars are simply a driven agenda by the extremists and the government for m ore control. It will also make them a ton of cash
Not just anyone is flying a plane with in feet of each other with thousands of air traffic controllers over watching the two to three highly trained and paid pilots in the cockpit.
You need a better example than airplanes.
Even then ask one of the passengers of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 what they think about the auto pilot on their 2013 flight to San Fran.
Trust will be built with low speed shuttles, there’s already around half dozen operating in the US that the public can use at office parks, campus and even downtown Vegas…
Yes you are correct as it will be in more basic proof of concept areas where trust and proof the systems are worked out. Then they will grow it from there.
Also with the additions on the lower level systems on the cars we will get. My GMC now has lane correction and auto braking. I am getting use to the auto lane correct but have yet to try the auto braking.
Note the auto lane correct works well but is not a sure thing. It works most of the time but where the lines are poor not so much.
Also the real issue is autonomous cars meshing with full driver driven cars. I can see people using their cars to mess with autonomous cars. I can see people swerving and cutting off the autonomous cars to mess with them. It could form a new range of road rage with a driver that can not fight back.
Also think of this. Today you can get on interstate 5 in California and the whole road is running 90 MPH, Now one guy in a autonomous car comes on the freeway and it only will run the 55 the speed limit. This could be a real issue.
Dear scott3, if anyone is going 90mph in a 55mph zone anywhere in the country, then the police should be handing speeding tickets out to those people. I am a firm believer that we all should be slowing down to the posted limit, not only is it safer but it saves energy too no matter what your power source.
Jeff here is the reality of I5 and much of the California highways and some other large metro areas.
The police are not there to enforce speed limits they are there to manage traffic flow.
In California I5 can be one of the highest flow freeways in the world. The key to keeping things moving is to keep the traffic all flowing together at the same speed even if it is over the limit.
The CHP does not use radar but they do monitor speeds and if it gets too fast they will do a rolling road block to slow it down and break up the packs. Then they let them go again.
The greatest cause of accidents often is not a bunch of cars speeding but often the speed differential between the fastest and slowest cars.
Yes it would be a perfect world if everyone did the limit but that is not how it works. You are not going to give everyone a ticket either so it comes down to management of what you have and try to keep them all close to the same speed no matter what it is.
As for energy savings…. Even in California even the tree huggers forget that when they are trying to get home after work.
Similar things happen in Dallas, Atlanta and other large metro areas.
Note even in California if you have an accident they do not even want you to stop on the freeway if the car can be moved. They will cite you if you do not get off the freeway. Note the many trucks that have no bumper in front of the steering tires. They are either missing or plastic as not to prevent wheels from turning. They are called California bumpers.
I do not live in California but I do spend a lot of time there and have thousands of miles of driving there. It is a different set of rules there.
Just driving along at 70 MPH and have a motorcycle go between you and the other car beside you is an attention getter. I marvel how they seldom get hit. They are only supposed to do this with slow traffic but even at speed it happens. I wonder if an autonomous car will be programed for that and just how it will deal with that.
We should be driving faster in all states and cities! I dont care about safety or saving the environment!
Then we will reading your obituary soon!
Nope, maybe yours
Dear Scott3, I understand LA’s and other metro area’s mass speed limit violation problem. It also happens in rural areas were I’m driving the limit at 70 mph and cars pass me by going at least 90mph. There was a head-on collision a few months ago with a car trying to pass another one here in southern Nevada on a state highway. It was determined that the driver in the car was going at least 90mph and hit a truck while trying to pass another car. Everyone died. I also understand that in high traffic areas the difference in speed does cause more accidents compared to everyone going at the same speed. That is way everyone has to be slowed down. Just because everyone is violating the law does not make it right. I think there has to be another way to slow people down. The only way in LA and other high traffic areas is to enact laws that allow the use of speed cameras similar to what they have at toll booths. Some states do have speed camera laws and use speed cameras and they are increasing. If caught they mail you a ticket. One thing I know for sure is that this mass public over speed limit lawlessness needs to be reduced not only for safety but for the environment was well. Here is the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety website on the state by state use of speed cameras chart: http://www dot his dot org / iihs / topics / laws / automated_enforcement / enforcementtable?topicName=speed
Dear Jeff
I think they need to remove speed limits all together! Speed limits are not posted for safety or to protect the environment. They are posted for one reason and one reason only revenue! So the city, county, state can make money!
A person should be able to drive how fast they want to and if something bad happens so be it!
Stop living in fear! Realize that you cant protect everybody.
What we need is the American version of the autobahn! Stay to the right if you dont want to get ran over!
Jeff I am not saying we should just ignore speeders.
I was just pointing out that in many areas speed just can be managed. Not prevented.
Cameras are limited to what they can do and the courts just tossed them from my area.
Where speed can be controlled do it.
My real intent was to pose the issues that would be faced if the car in high traffic areas is running the speed limit but everyone else is much faster. The difference in speed will cause an accident.
I am just being realistic to what is out there and what would be faced.
People should not steal or kill but they do and you can only so much to prevent it. I am watching Live PD now and they clearly show the limits law enforcement faces.
No speed limits has already been tried in Montana. Didn’t go well because of morons who “think” they know better than everyone else – like Brian – and eventually something goes wrong. Normal traffic flow is 5 to 10 over the speed limit because that’s all the faster you can safely go over posted limits. That’s also normally ok by cops. Works fine.
Traffic stops can be caused by something as simple as a few slower drivers up ahead, and those stops cause most accidents.
I won’t use AV programs if they dictate speed limit compliance. Won’t buy them.
I like having the sensors in my car to increase safety but they are frequently wrong. Ghost alerts I guess. We would be stupid to put absolute trust in them. True AVs aren’t ready for prime time, not even close.
Having the ability to drive without restrictions just show how people love to be controlled and told what to do. If drivers would stop crashing into things then the speed would not be a problem. Maybe we should be focused on teaching people how to be better drivers! But that’s way to hard, let’s just force laws onto the masses!
If you have the ability to control a car at 150 then you should be able to. If you cant then stay at 75 with the people who were never properly taught how to drive!
We live in a sad world because of people like you who want or need every aspect of our lives to be as safe as possible! That equals BORING!
Laws are in place to protect the reasonable people from immature idiots who think they can do what ever.