Want a Ride? Attitudes Towards Autonomous Driving and Behavior in Autonomous Vehicles

TL;DR

The paper investigates whether attitudes toward autonomous driving predict actual behavior inside autonomous vehicles. It bridges attitude and behavior by conducting a field experiment with 12 licensed participants in an ITS vehicle performing non-driving tasks, measuring driving interventions and eye glance in relation to pre-task attitude scores. Results show no significant correlations between attitudes and either interventions ($p>0.05$) or gaze, implying that survey-based acceptance may not translate to real-world behavior; task performance remained high with forward gaze common across participants. The work highlights the value—and necessity—of field testing to inform policy and vehicle design, while noting limitations such as small sample size and a controlled test track.

Abstract

Research conducted previously has focused on either attitudes toward or behaviors associated with autonomous driving. In this paper, we bridge these two dimensions by exploring how attitudes towards autonomous driving influence behavior in an autonomous car. We conducted a field experiment with twelve participants engaged in non-driving related tasks. Our findings indicate that attitudes towards autonomous driving do not affect participants' driving interventions in vehicle control and eye glance behavior. Therefore, studies on autonomous driving technology lacking field tests might be unreliable for assessing the potential behaviors, attitudes, and acceptance of autonomous vehicles.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Research vehicle from the Intelligent Transport Systems Department at the Johannes Kepler University Linz in Austria. The vehicle was utilized to perform the field test experiments.
• Figure 2: Seating arrangement in the JKU-ITS vehicle during testing
• Figure 3: Distribution of the answers to the questionnaire for each category: Emotional Score, Regulation Score and Safety score.
• Figure 4: Results of the dependent variables, Task Completion Scores and observed behaviors. The mean Task Completion Score is $6.21$ and the standard deviation is $0.69$.
• Figure 5: 2D-histogram of the bivariate distributions of the attitude scores and observed behaviors with counts of occurences.