Consumer Knowledge and Acceptance of Driving Automation: Changes Over Time and Across Age Groups

Increasing availability of and extensive investments toward automation in consumer vehicles call for a better understanding public perceptions acceptance. This study presents five-year series large-scale surveys (N=17,548, average 3,510 participants/year) on knowledge acceptance vehicle the United States. Results suggest continued hesitance use self-driving vehicles, with willingness to increasing sharply under hypothetical conditions around inability drive added safety assurance. While drivers all ages were most comfortable driver assist level automation, overall decreased age. Findings also indicate that may have incorrect beliefs regarding vehicles. In conclusion, drivers’ changes over time, is tied factors beyond current state development deployment, depend relative assessment benefits reliability comparison their own driving capabilities.