Citation

Yang CYD, Fisher DL. J. Intell. Transp. Syst. 2021; 25(2): 135-138.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/15472450.2021.1872143

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

During the past two decades, there has been a rapidly growing interest and continuous investment in advanced surface transportation technologies, especially connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) such as passenger cars, buses, and light and heavy trucks (Bishop, 2020). Interest escalated after Google entered the space early in 2010. At the start of 2018, it looked like vehicles with advanced technologies were on the verge of becoming a wide-spread reality. Uber prepared to launch a robo-taxi service. Waymo indicated that individuals would be able to ride in a driverless car by the end of the year. General Motors touted a demonstration it would undertake in New York City (Fisher et al., 2020). None of this has come to pass.

Three factors have likely contributed to the apparent slowing of the adoption of automated vehicles, all having to do with safety. The first factor is what is sometimes referred to as dread risk. Dread risk is typically defined as the fear associated with an event where large numbers of people are killed in an unpredictable, catastrophic event (Slovic, 1987). On the surface, the crash of an automated vehicle does not represent an event that would normally be associated with dread risk. Yet, the results from a recent large survey indicate that people categorize vehicle automation in terms similar to dread risk (Lee & Kolodge, 2019). If it is the case that vehicle automation produces feelings of dread risk, then Lee (2019) argues that AVs might need to be 1,000 times safer than conventional vehicles to be perceived as having the same risk. Perhaps the dramatic crash in Phoenix, Arizona of an automated vehicle with a bicyclist magnified the concerns that drivers have with the safety of automated vehicles. Even if automation does not provoke dread risk, recent surveys suggest that three in four Americans remain afraid of fully automated vehicles (Edmonds, 2019)...

Language: en