Hands on the wheel: Consumers remain wary of self-driving car safety

By Autolist.com

(May 31, 2018) A majority of U.S. car buyers do not believe self-driving or autonomous vehicles are safer than those driven by humans, according to the latest study by Autolist.com. The survey also found that many consumers feel safer knowing there’s a human driver able to take control during self-driving tests. However, consumers generally do not think self-driving vehicles should be tested on public roads.

Fifty-three percent of survey respondents said they believe self-driving cars are not safer than those driven by humans. Just 19 percent said they thought self-driving vehicles were safer while 28 percent remained undecided.

This skepticism about the safety of self-driving cars is also why many consumers don’t think these types of vehicles should be allowed to test on public roads, Autolist found. Forty-eight percent of respondents said such testing shouldn’t be allowed; 36 percent said it should and 16 percent were undecided.

Currently, 14 states allow the testing of self-driving cars while another seven states (and Washington D.C.) have enacted legislation related to these vehicles.

Autolist conducted the survey with 1,404 consumers in March and April, in the weeks after an autonomous Uber test vehicle in Arizona hit and killed Elaine Herzberg while she was crossing the road at night with her bike.

Last week, the National Transportation Safety Board said that Uber had disabled the automatic emergency braking system on the autonomous test Volvo involved in the Arizona crash. Uber’s setup was designed to rely on driver intervention, though the system was not programmed to alert the driver to hazards.

The ability for a human to intervene and take control of an autonomous test vehicle is overwhelmingly important to consumers, Autolist’s survey found.

Seventy-eight percent of respondents said they would feel safer if such test vehicles included a human in the driver’s seat who could take control of the car at a moment’s notice. Fourteen percent of those surveyed said a human driver didn’t make them feel safer; eight percent were undecided.

While the idea of such a fail-safe measure is understandably appealing, it didn’t prevent the Uber test vehicle from fatally hitting Herzberg in March. An Uber employee was in the driver’s seat of the test vehicle and in-car video of the incident shows the driver looking down the moment before the vehicle hits Herzberg.

Despite the high-profile Uber incident in March, many consumers say their views on the safety of self-driving vehicles were not affected by the crash or subsequent Tesla crashes involving its semi-autonomous Autopilot system.

Forty-four percent of respondents said the Uber accident didn’t negatively change their view of the safety of autonomous cars. 31 percent said the incident did change their views while 25 percent were undecided.