Survey says consumers losing trust in self-driving cars after crashes

Self-driving cars were introduced in order to make people’s lives much easier, however, in light of recent incidents and accidents, polls show that people have started losing their trust in them.

Recently, many autonomous cars have been involved in road accidents, some of them even fatal, which has lead to the loss of people’s trust in them, according to a new poll.

According to The Verge, with self-driving car crashes including cars of Uber, Tesla and many others, American Automobile Association (AAA) conducted a survey where they contacted 1,014 adults where they were asked three questions; if US drivers were comfortable with the idea of riding a fully self-driving car? If US drivers were comfortable with the idea of sharing the road with a self-driving car while walking or riding a bike? If U.S. drivers wanted semi- autonomous technologies in their next vehicle?

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The results showed that almost 73% of American drivers said that they would be too afraid to ride in completely autonomous cars. The percentage has increased from being 63% back in 2017, wrote Mashable. Also, 63% of US adults have reported that they would feel less safe sharing the road with a self-driving car while walking or riding a bicycle.

Some more findings were that one in five (20%) of US drivers would trust a self-driving vehicle, while 7% were unsure. Also, women (83%) are more likely to be afraid than men (63%). Additionally, two-thirds (64%) of millennial drivers would be afraid to ride in a fully self-driving vehicle, a rise in value from 49% at the end of 2017.

“This technology is relatively new and everyone is watching it closely. When an incident occurs, it gets a lot of media attention, and people become concerned about their safety,” said Greg Bannon, director of automotive engineering at AAA.

Many people fear self-driving cars for various reasons such as the loss of control, distrust of the technology, malicious hacking, etc. Yet, the manufacturing companies are taking different approaches to get back people’s trust including Waymo introducing its own ad campaign emphasizing on the technology’s safety.