Safer than the average human driver (who is less safe than me)? Examining a popular safety benchmark for self-driving cars

Abstract

Although the level of safety required before drivers will accept self-driving cars is not clear, the criterion of being safer than a human driver has become pervasive in the discourse on vehicle automation. This criterion actually means "safer than the average human driver," because it is necessarily defined with respect to population-level data. At the level of individual risk assessment, a body of research has shown that most drivers perceive themselves to be safer than the average driver (the better-than-average effect). Using an online sample of U.S. drivers, this study replicated the better than average effect and showed that most drivers stated a desire for self-driving cars that are safer than their own perceived ability to drive safely before they would:(1) feel reasonably safe riding in a self-driving vehicle; (2) buy a self-driving vehicle, all other things (cost, etc.) being equal; and (3) allow self-driving vehicles on public roads. Since most drivers believe they are better than average drivers, the benchmark of achieving automation that is safer than a human driver (on average) may not represent acceptably safe performance of selfdriving cars for most drivers.

Blaming automated vehicles in difficult situations

“…However, this explanation is refuted by our post-assessment questions which found participants expressing higher likelihood of making a mistake (in the considered situations) for machine drivers than for human drivers. This runs counter to the literature on the public's risk acceptance of AVs, which shows that the public expects AVs to be significantly safer than human drivers, feel reasonably safe riding in an AV, and would allow AVs on public roads ( Nees, 2019 ). Our participants' expectation of failure can be seen as an expectation of a driver's ability to avoid a mistake i.e., higher perceived competence at driving for humans.…”

How different autonomous vehicle presentation influences its acceptance: Is a communal car better than agentic one?

“…Many of them concentrate on demographic factors. It has been confirmed that younger male drivers had a more positive attitude towards AVs and were more willing to buy one [23,[34][35][36][37]. Moreover, such factors like higher income [35], living in an urban area [38], techsavvy and also involvement in more crashes [39] positively affect the attitudes towards AVs [13].…”

Factors Influencing the Purchase Intention of Autonomous Cars

“…As mentioned earlier, ACs use a number of cameras, sensors, radars, communication devices, protocols and algorithms to safely manoeuvre in traffic. Due to the several media covered accidents which involved test ACs, as well as to the human's general distrust of new technologies, concerns regarding the safety of ACs are high [7][8][9] and most drivers think that the level of automation which is thought to be safer than a human driver will not represent an acceptably safe performance for most drivers [26].…”