Gadgetory

we're used to driving we think we're good at it and we don't really trust computers those three things are the main hurdles that stand between a lot of people and buying into the self-driving future the autonomous car that's coming that's not gonna stop it from getting here but along the way it will behoove regulators car makers and just about all of us to pay attention to those who maybe need to be brought along a little more researchers Michael sivak and Brandon shut lis at University of Michigan have some early answers they surveyed 505 adult us drivers in June 2015 to take their temp on vehicle autonomy or attitudes bubbled up autonomy itself the most drivers especially women want no self-driving followed by almost as many who are open to partial self-driving and under 16% interested in fully automated cars at this point the biggest naysayers to full automation where drivers 60 and older just 11% of them liked the idea a big problem for policy makers who think autonomy is going to allow older drivers to keep doing so safely longer control we can't get imagine the steering wheel and pedals going away over 96% of the drivers said keep those century-old controls even if a car is fully self-driving interestingly there was little difference in this response between age groups or gender interface here an almost even split between those who want to tell their self-driving car where to take them by a voice command versus via a touchscreen have these folks tried automotive voice commands only 8% of drivers want to use their phone for this task and a quaint 3% thought a keyboard and mouse might work best finally notification for decades we're going to have partial self-driving cars that we'll need to hand it back to us on occasion and clearly we don't want to be surprised over 59% of us want to be alerted by a sound and visuals and something vibrating about a fifth said they can do without the vibration part maybe they've tried one of those Cadillacs that already has an odd vibrating alert seat so it all adds up to a reality check and it will pay for car makers and regulators to double check their assumptions about our attitudes around self-driving in some of the details of how we expect it to work rather than assume that we're all going to embrace it from some homogenous fashion more realities of modern driving revealed now at CNET on cars comm click on smarter driving