Fear of autonomous cars on the rise, new study

The result also found that 10% of Americans believe they can buy a car which drives itself while they are asleep, which isn’t true.

According to a new study, the attitude towards self-driving cars is on the decline. The survey concludes that 68% of the people involved were actively afraid of self-driving technology – the highest ever recorded.

The results also showed that only 9% of the people in the survey trusted a self-driving vehicle, while the remaining 23% remained unsure. Both these categories suffered a dip compared to the 2022 survey results, where 15% of the people involved trusted the tech, and 30% were unsure.

Greg Brannon, Director of Automotive Research, AAA, was surprised stating that they were not expecting such a dramatic decline in trust compared to the previous years. He attributed the decline in trust to the number of high-profile crashes that have occurred over the last year.

Reports also stated that a part of the fear is also due to the fundamental misunderstanding of the technology. The result found that 10% of Americans believe they can buy a car which drives itself while they are asleep, which isn’t true. This misunderstanding is attributed to the naming convention across the industry, with Tesla’s Level 2 systems ‘Autopilot’ and ‘FSD’ being singled out. Americans (22% of them) expect systems with names like ProPILOT or Pilot Assist to have the ability to drive the car without human supervision.

Going forward, AAA wants to work with automakers to create consistency across the industry. They also want to make customers understand the type of tech in their car and how, when and where these systems are safe to use, ultimately building trust.

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