Can Automated Vehicles Be Useful to Persons Living With Dementia? The Perspectives of Care Partners of People Living With Dementia

Abstract

Background and Objectives Driving cessation is a complex challenge with significant emotional and health implications for people with dementia, which also affects their family care partners. Automated vehicles (AVs) could potentially be used to delay driving cessation and its adverse consequences for people with dementia and their care partners. Yet, no study to date has investigated whether care partners consider AVs to be potentially useful for people with dementia. Research Design and Methods This mixed-methods study assessed the views of 20 former or current family care partners of people with dementia on AV use by people with dementia. Specifically, questionnaires and semistructured interviews were used to examine care partners’ acceptance of AV use by people with dementia and their views about the potential usefulness of AVs for people with dementia. Results The results demonstrated that care partners identified possible benefits of AV use by people with dementia such as their anticipated higher social participation. However, care partners also voiced major concerns around AV use by people with dementia and reported significantly lower levels of trust in and perceived safety of AVs if used by the person with dementia in their care compared to themselves. Care partners’ concerns about AV use by people with dementia included concerns around the driving of people with dementia that AVs are not designed to address; concerns that are specific to AVs but are not relevant to the nonautomated driving of people with dementia; and concerns that arise from existing challenges around the nonautomated driving of people with dementia but may be exacerbated by AV use. Discussion and Implications Findings from this study can inform future designs of AVs that are more accessible and useful for people with dementia.

Automated Vehicles for People With Dementia: A “Tremendous Potential” That “Has Ways to go”―Reports of a Qualitative Study

“…Similar notions of the greater perceived benefits of FAVs for people with dementia compared to PAVs were also observed in the results of our qualitative analysis, where people with dementia highlighted additional incentives for FAV use compared to PAV use, including personal freedom, liberty to engage in nondriving tasks, and unloading family care-partners’ responsibilities. The latter was congruent with the findings of previous research on care-partners perspectives of AV use by people with dementia in their care, where compared to PAVs, FAVs were deemed more useful by family care-partners of people with dementia in unloading their caregiving responsibilities ( Haghzare et al, 2022 ). Similarly, people with dementia noted different levels of benefits for PAVs versus FAVs in helping their transition to nondriving.…”

“…AV testing among people with dementia can additionally help inform governmental standards on AV development, specific AV designs, and AV licensing and training for people with dementia, which are not only required to ensure the accessibility and safety of AVs for people with dementia but were also highlighted in this study by people with dementia as a potential means to overcome their hesitancies to use AVs. AV testing among people with dementia could also help alleviate the concerns of care-partners identified in previous research pertaining to potential challenges that people with dementia in their care may face when using AVs ( Haghzare et al, 2022 ).…”

Designing a Reminders System in Highly Automated Vehicles’ Interfaces for Individuals With Mild Cognitive Impairment

“…Highly AVs that correspond to levels 4 and 5 as defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE International, 2021) offer full driving automation, with no requirement for the users to take over driving. As such, highly AVs can serve as assistive technologies that perform all basic driving tasks for individuals with MCI or dementia, and therefore, relieve them from manual control of the vehicle (Haghzare et al, 2021). This can allow individuals with MCI to travel by themselves and possibly increase their independence and mobility.…”

“…However, these types of higher order activities may introduce new challenges since they may be dependent on memory and decision-making ability and present a new barrier to safe and efficient use by individuals with MCI. For example, a study by Haghzare et al (2021) exploring dementia patients' care partners' perceptions of AVs revealed that people with dementia may face challenges in navigating any pre-trip-or post-trip-related tasks, such as negotiating pick-up and drop-off locations. They also concluded that these shortcomings are due to the fact that AVs are not designed as assistive technologies specifically for people with cognitive impairments.…”