According to a 2015 Goodyear/LSE survey of drivers from 15 European countries, 88 percent of respondents agreed that there are “unwritten rules” that govern driver interactions with pedestrians, cyclists and other vehicles on the road. Now new research with Goodyear will investigate the attitudes and readiness of drivers to share the road with autonomous vehicles.
A key question for this year’s research is how the unwritten rules and driver behaviour that we employ will apply to self-driving cars, and to what extent self-driving cars will need to learn the common sense humans use to make every-day driving situations work.
Dr Chris Tennant, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, LSE
Preliminary focus group discussions have raised questions from drivers about the flexibility of self-driving cars to adapt to the social landscape of the road; whether human drivers will take advantage of computer drivers’ strict adherence to the rules of the road; or, to the contrary, how rule-abiding self-driving cars might lead the way to positive change, encouraging higher standards of behaviour and safety from all drivers.
The project, commissioned via LSE Consulting, will seek driver opinions from 11 European countries through surveys and focus groups. The findings will be published in October 2016.
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