The Effect of System Restrictions on Acceptance of Self-Driving Cars

Only some state of the art driving automation systems (DAS) of current self-driving cars include system restrictions that actively counteract misuse instead of only informing the drivers of the limitations of the system. Misuse can lead to accidents, which could reduce acceptance of self-driving cars at a population level. However, system restrictions could also affect acceptance as DAS with restrictions might be perceived less useful and provide less ease of use. In this paper, we describe an experiment that investigates this trade-off between safety and traditional technology acceptance constructs. We implement four different versions of a driving simulation application using a novel platform for mobile online experiments, MOE. We measure technology acceptance using an adapted UTAUT2 questionnaire before and after the driving simulation and compare it between the four different versions. This research has implications for new technologies that require a trade-off between safety and technology acceptance including self-driving cars.