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Many People Still Don't Want To Ride in Self-driving Cars, Survey Finds (cnbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the resistance-to-change dept.

A lot of people may still have serious reservations about riding in fully autonomous vehicles, a new survey from Gartner indicates. From a report: The Gartner Consumer Trends in Automotive people surveyed about 1,500 people in the United States and Germany from April through May, and found that 55 percent of the people they spoke to would not ride in a fully autonomous car. However, just over 70 percent would ride in a car that was partially autonomous. Gartner defined partially autonomous vehicles as those that could drive autonomously, but allow a driver to retake control of the car if needed. Advocates of autonomous driving have said the technology will actually make driving safer, since statistics indicate human behavior is the major cause of most auto crashes. But many consumers familiar with the tendency of other electronic devices to sometimes malfunction or perform erratically still seem to have trouble accepting the idea of being held in a vehicle that could fail.

30 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Reasons by arth1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not just about safety, but expediency and what happens if something goes wrong. Do you want to risk being stuck for hours because there's no driver that can drive you around the branch in the road? Do you want to be delayed to a meeting because it will put safety above all other concerns and stop or slow down whenever in doubt?

    1. Re:Reasons by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      [...] and what happens if something goes wrong.

      The self-driving car pulls to the side of the road, comes to a complete stop, request your AAA membership to call for a tow, and then calls Uber or Lyft to pick you up.

    2. Re:Reasons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      The automated Uber of Lyft car shows up, running the same software. It senses the same condition that made the previous vehicle wig-out, pulls to the side of the road, comes to a complete stop, requests the owner's AAA membership to call for a tow, and then calls Uber or Lyft to pick you up.

    3. Re:Reasons by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Do you want to risk being stuck for hours because there's no driver that can drive you around the branch in the road?

      Even as old and feeble as I am, I can get out and move the branch myself, if need be. And if the branch is too big for me to move manually, it's probably not something I'm going to be driving around if I'm in a normal car.

      Do you want to be delayed to a meeting because it will put safety above all other concerns and stop or slow down whenever in doubt?

      Yes, I think I do. MY safety is way more important to me than your meeting is....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    4. Re:Reasons by Stormy+Dragon · · Score: 2

      Well, eventually the fact that all of Uber's cars are stuck at one spot will assure someone comes to do something about the branch.

    5. Re:Reasons by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Funny

      If a branch in the road will cause the car to completely shut down, no, I'm not missing a meeting for that shit.

      If a branch in the road will cause the car to completely shut down, then there is no way in heck that they will available to the general public.

      My wife has a Tesla with autopilot. It doesn't stop when the road branches. It knows which branch to take by using a super advanced technology known to navigation experts as a "map".

      Knowing which fork in the road to take is a solved problem.

    6. Re:Reasons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      No, each car keeps getting towed away so there's only 1-3 Uber cars there at any given time. I think it's time to start investing in towing companies! Actually, I'll make an app that lets anyone with a hitch on their car sign up to be a potential tower. While you're driving along, it'll alert you to anyone nearby who needs to be towed. If you're in an area with towing companies than the service is free. Once those are gone, I'll charge you a monthly subscriptions and a per use fee.

    7. Re:Reasons by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 2

      But can you run fast enough to catch the car after the object obstructing its path has been removed?

      Ahh, you're one of the idiots who doesn't turn the car off before you get out, eh?

      Frankly, I've always believed that you don't leave the car running when you get out of the "driver's seat". But, hey, maybe I'm just weird that way....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    8. Re:Reasons by arth1 · · Score: 2

      Your argument is that you'd rather drive unsafely and put yours, and others, lives and well being in danger than be late for a meeting.

      This is exactly why we need autonomous cars.

      No, this is why we are doomed as a species - the younger generation doesn't understand the concept of "acceptable risk".
      Most of us choose to take risks every day. We weighs the pros and cons, and quite often taking the risk wins, because the cost of avoiding the risk is larger than the cost of failure divided by a small risk.

      Some are happy to live in a society where playgrounds can't have trees to climb in, cutlery has to be dull, and you have to go to the airport two hours before boarding time. While some of us still enjoy living, which does include taking acceptable risks.

      The risk of dying in a car crash isn't all that high. Nationally in the US, the official lifetime risk of dying as a driver or passenger of a vehicle is 1:645. That's an average from several decades, including back when cars and roads were far less safe. Today, the risk is far less - extrapolating 2014 data, the risk is around 1:4,000 to 1:20,000 depending on where you live. That's near negligible.
      The risk of poisoning being the cause of death is 1:96, but we don't go around fearing poisoning every moment of life. We accept the risk, try to lower it when it's not too inconvenient, and continue to live.

    9. Re:Reasons by houghi · · Score: 2

      That is why I don't use escalators. Can you imagine being stuck on those for hours?

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  2. Aircraft yes, automobile no by Baron_Yam · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Aircraft have well-defined places to take off and land, with very strictly enforced rules. In transit there is nothing like trying to weave through unmarked construction with cyclists and pedestrians trying to cross your path without warning.

    There's more to worry about with the craft control itself, but that's where computers excel.

    I'd get in a pilotless plane long before I'd be a passenger in a driverless car.

  3. Totally irrelevant by MSBob · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The world will change whether people who enjoy driving like it or not. Just like nobody today insists on riding in an assisted elevator those people will have to adapt. Over time the pressures of technology will make human driven cars more expensive to own because of the higher insurance rates, having to add more mechanical steering components etc. Even just individual vehicle ownership may become very expensive because car sharing services will likely become extremely prevalent and efficient. Owning a vehicle outright will make very little economic sense. There will always be a market for manually operated cars but those cars are likely going to get relegated to race tracks and that market will probably be as big as the market for chariots today. And yes, chariots are still a thing and there is a chariot racing track not far from my place. And it's being used daily. But needless to say the people who go there don't ride chariots to the office in the morning.

    --
    Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
    1. Re:Totally irrelevant by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

      Elevators are a completely different scenario. It goes up or down, it's alone in its shaft, there's nothing to avoid while moving, there's specific places to stop and if repairs are to be made then it's powered down.

      Driving a car on the road is probably one of the worst case scenario for A.I. and we're trying to achieve that in the first dozen tasks given to A.I.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    2. Re:Totally irrelevant by MSBob · · Score: 2

      I guess we are just going to have to wait and see, aren't we? Here why I believe you are totally incorrect with your prediction. Software companies want autonomous cars to happen, car companies want autonomous cars to happen, logistics companies REALLY want autonomous freight. It's only a matter of time. And your proverbial family of four or their relatives will be appeased with a five million dollars lawsuit settlement and the whole thing will proceed anyway because that's what the big money wants. As for the tech itself, you should pay more attention to where the research is. scene recognition is at near human levels already and in many cases at superhuman levels. A couple more years of hardware and software progress and humans will be no match for a self driving car in terms of safety and efficiency. None of the latest systems are hardcoded in any way. They are _trained_ on millions of hours of safe human driving data and they are getting better every hour of every day. How many hours of driving experience have _you_ logged in your lifetime?

      --
      Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
    3. Re:Totally irrelevant by Strider- · · Score: 2

      The road system is much more than just the city. I just got back from a road trip to watch the eclipse, and sure, an automated vehicle probably could have done the majority of the driving, the last 35 miles into our selected spot was over rough forest service roads, and the last 500 feet over nothing more than a slightly mowed track in the sage brush. Yes, stuff like this is an edge case, but it's also not uncommon.

      I work with a charity that runs a camp in an isolated location. We're mostly staffed by volunteers, who are usually college age. One of our greatest difficulties this year was finding enough licensed drivers to do the various jobs at our site. We need people to drive the luggage truck, service vehicles, construction vehicles, and so forth. More and more of our volunteers have never learned to drive, nevermind having their CDLs. Knowing how to drive a vehicle is going to be a needed skill for decades to come, even if it's not required for the daily commute.

      --
      ...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
  4. If you live in Florida by HangingChad · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You'll be totally okay with self-driving cars. We have some of the highest insurance rates in the nation because of the number of old people, functional alcoholics, and drug users behind the wheel. I will totally trust AI over my fellow drivers here.

    --
    That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
  5. New technology by nine-times · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I would bet that this is common for new technologies. I remember the early 1990s when a lot of people didn't like the idea of carrying a cell phone. I remember in the 2000s, few people saw the value of smartphones. I knew several people who weren't sure about Netflix streaming, and thought the idea of cord-cutting was absurd. A lot of those people have now cancelled their cable.

    Of course people are unsure about self-driving cars. Give it enough time for them to be common, and to have a proven safety record. The results of that survey will change.

    1. Re:New technology by MSBob · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yep, I once built an unsupervised learning algorithm for discovering vulnerabilities in a network topology. It was always over 95% accurate with most errors being false positives. When I wrote it ten years ago nobody wanted it. Now they are all over it and very little of that code has changed since. The security admins just came around.

      --
      Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
    2. Re:New technology by Kjella · · Score: 3, Informative

      I would bet that this is common for new technologies. I remember the early 1990s when a lot of people didn't like the idea of carrying a cell phone. I remember in the 2000s, few people saw the value of smartphones. I knew several people who weren't sure about Netflix streaming, and thought the idea of cord-cutting was absurd. A lot of those people have now cancelled their cable. Of course people are unsure about self-driving cars. Give it enough time for them to be common, and to have a proven safety record. The results of that survey will change.

      I just remember that video from the first pre-alpha test with non-project Google employees where the guy goes rummaging through his backpack for a charger or something for the longest time while the car is speeding down the highway. That's when they figured the path to full autonomy is not through taking away more and more responsibilities, either the car is driving or you are. Presumably it was a huge fan of the project to volunteer but it took only hours or possibly even less from being handed an extremely experimental system to blindly trusting it with his life.

      To be honest, in low speed driving I'm more concerned about liability and hurting soft targets than personal danger. With all the crumble zones, airbags, seat belt and so on a crash could get expensive and pedestrians, cyclists, bikers etc. might get hurt but I'm unlikely to sustain any major injury to myself. I know a friend of mine who "only" cracked a rib in a pretty solid crash but the car was a wreck. Also traffic tickets of various kinds. So daily commute that is mostly trickling my way through 20-30 mph zones with traffic slowing it down further? No doubt the car is driving the moment I can let it.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    3. Re:New technology by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Informative

      Most people who answered this question have no knowledge allowing them to make an informed decision on this question. A good portion of them have never even thought about the question. Some of them weren't even sure what an autonomous vehicle is.

      All of these people came up with an opinion, because it was asked of them on the spot. This is the kind of opinion that will change when the wind changes.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  6. I don't by denisbergeron · · Score: 2

    even want to drive a car with an automatic transmission... don't tallk about self driving !

    --
    Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
    1. Re:I don't by Seven+Spirals · · Score: 2

      Damn straight, brother. Gimme a stick and at least 300HP. The other geeks of the world can hang out and wait for flying cars, self-driving cars, the next Amiga, and a cure for cancer. I'll be driving to Vegas with their sister.

  7. Chicken and egg problem by iMadeGhostzilla · · Score: 2

    I would trust autonomous driving in a setting if most if not all other cars are autonomous, there are no stray animals or people or weather conditions on the road. In other words the domain is much more constrained.

    And in fact I do, think of those trains in airport concourses or the Las Vegas strip.

    1. Re:Chicken and egg problem by iMadeGhostzilla · · Score: 2

      Not sure if you're joking but I'll bite and say nerd though I am, I use the scientific method for calculating the eclipse or building/tweaking my hobby electronic device that if fails no lives are lost. When it comes to supercomplexity such as diet, exercise, trans fats or self driving cars, I'll give that evidence, as often produced by people with vested interests, maybe a 0.3 weight factor, depending on what the risk and reward is. The rest will go to gut feeling, logic, and observation of historical heuristics for doing the same thing.

      I use the high value of 0.3 because I'm nerd, non-nerds typically give it less.

  8. Mixed Mode by cgfsd · · Score: 2

    I would love to see a mixed mode of self driving cars. When you enter the Interstate the computer takes over. This would make the Interstate much quicker and safer. When you exit the Interstate you have the option of taking back control or using automated mode. Interstate driving in large cities sucks. People are freaking idiots cutting in an out, no turn signals, looky looes., etc. I would gladly trust a computer over the idiot next to me on the Interstate.

  9. Re:I will drive myself, thanks. by MightyYar · · Score: 2

    Well, yeah. The headline is bizarre. "Still"??? I don't think there are any on the consumer market - I don't think we're ready for "still" yet! :)

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  10. human behaviour by Mozai · · Score: 2

    > statistics indicate human behavior is the major cause of most auto crashes

    Ah, but is OTHER humans that are the cause of accidents, not me. That's why it's better if OTHER humans use self-driving cars, but I'm better off in control because I'm better than OTHER humans.

  11. I'm fine with self driving if the car is offline! by ffkom · · Score: 2

    What I certainly won't do is becoming passenger in a car that is not really self-driving, but totally dependent on permanent online transmissions, hyper-accurate maps (which of course will never really be up-to-date) and other weird external influences.

    If the industry can sell me a car that it really autonomous, as in: "Has sensors to look around and that is all it needs", then I'm buying.

    Oh, and sure, I totally don't want a car that any half-competent script-kid-hacker can manipulate to drive into the next tree - which is equivalent to "I don't want a car that is "online", ever.

  12. it's not really a choice by shadowrat · · Score: 2

    For a long time, i've contemplated my comfort level with riding in an autonomous car. I turned it over and over in my head wondering if i could ever be truly comfortable.

    Recently, I found myself riding down the San Francisco highways in a coworker's model X on autopilot. I found i quickly became comfortable with my coworker answering emails while the car navigated the roads. It took me all of 10 minutes to just accept it as normal.

    then the car lurched suddenly and veered wildly into the next lane. the driver quickly grabbed the wheel and put it back on course. He gave some explanations about the car losing sight of the vehicle it was tailing and deciding to pick up tailing the car in the next lane. We were totally safe he assured us. Maybe, but i realized something important.

    These cars are already all around me. I don't really have a choice anymore on if i trust my safety to them. They are next to me on the highways. They are next to me in the city streets. It doesn't matter if i'm ready or not. I've been taking the risk the whole time they've existed.

  13. Semi-related: Kill Switches Incoming... When? by Slugster · · Score: 2

    I am wondering how long will it be until police have the ability to remotely shut off cars?... While the cars are underway?

    Obligatory existing movie reference--Idiocracy: "Why are we slowing down?" ,,, "They turned off my battery!"
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
    (and it's even an electric car too. Mike Judge is psychic)

    Without trying too hard, I can imagine a few instances where an automatic-driving car could end up rolling down the road on its way to (somewhere) with nobody alive in it, or nobody old enough in it to possibly intervene if necessary.
    It only stands to reason that the police will need to have a way to instantly and quickly shut the vehicle's motive power off, in some safe fashion.

    And while the police having that ability doesn't worry me much, hackers learning how to do it will be able to cause quite a worry.
    Any hardware or software process that is quick and simple (that can literally be done at the press of a button) won't be difficult to hack...