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As we can see autonomous vehicles are creating a huge wave, different public opinions have been gathered such as:-

The investigation by Schoettle and Sivak (2014), was carried out with 1533 respondents, and they were from The United States of America, The United Kingdom, and Australia. Public opinion was conducted for autonomous and self-driving vehicles.

The results indicated an interest in complete self-driving vehicle technology but respondents were majorly not willing to pay extra for this particular technology. Respondents from the U.S. are more concerned regarding data privacy, interaction with non-self-driving vehicles, learning to use the vehicles and performance of the vehicle in poor weather conditions. 

As another survey conducted by Underwood (2014), involving 217 transportation experts on automation vehicles found out that legal liability and regulations are considered the most difficult barriers towards the fully automated driving vehicles’ deployment whereas social and consumer acceptance are regarded as the least difficult barriers. 

In the survey conducted by Kyriakidis et al. (2015) where 4886 respondents from 109 countries are involved. Respondents in this study indicated fully automated driving i.e. level 5 to be easier than manual where level 3 is partially automated driving was perceived more difficult.

Software hacking and misuse, legal issues, and safety were considered to be the main focus. Besides, willingness to pay $7000 or more for a level 5 fully autonomous vehicle was higher in 20% of the respondents whereas 70% stated that the gain of the market share will be 50%of the market share by 2050.

421 driver’s attitudes in France in 2014 were investigated, as per Payre et al. (2014) and the autonomous vehicle accessibility, as well as their intention with level 5 focus, were using a scoring system.

In that, 68% of respondents scored 4 out of 7 for the autonomous vehicle’s acceptability. Whereas an important thing to notice was the acceptance attitude shown by the older people towards such technologies as compared to the willingness to pay.  

As per Hohenberger et al. (2016), emotion and affective reaction indicated gender differences. As it was found out that men are likely to anticipate pleasure and not anxiety related to the autonomous vehicle’s willingness. 

According to Haboucha et al. (2017), Israelis men’s attitude is more towards shared autonomous vehicles than privately-owned autonomous vehicles. 

Seeing the trend of acceptance being more from people with higher levels of education, Car Technology Acceptance Model (CTAM) was developed by Osswald et al. (2012) where the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology along with other attitudinal constructs such as safety was incorporated.

Source:- Transportation Research Part C 95 (2018) 773–784, An empirical investigation on consumers’ intentions towards autonomous driving by Ilias Panagiotopoulos⁎, George Dimitrakopoulos. (Department of Telematics and Informatics, Harokopio University of Athens, 9 Omirou str., 17778 Tavros, Athens, Greece).