RAC Report on Motoring 2016

RAC call to action: Autonomous vehicles: see page 91

RAC Report on Motoring 2016

5.0 The car of the future

Uncertainty and a lack of information can also stimulate other emotions and a majority of motorists (62%) confess to being scared by the thought of driverless cars on the road. The Report also quizzed drivers about their attitudes to existing in-car technology and their responses contrast sharply with those for fully autonomous vehicles. There is widespread agreement (84%) that cars are safer today than in the past while 63% believe that driver-assistance technologies such as lane-departure warning or blind-spot monitoring are making roads less hazardous. In terms of technology that records how well people are driving, for example via the black box recorders used in telematics insurance policies, there has been a marked shift in acceptance compared to 2010. Back then, the majority of motorists (58%) were opposed to any technology that allowed other people to monitor the movements of their vehicle whereas in 2016 only 33% of motorists say they are against such devices recording how well they are driving.

There is less opposition (23%) to systems which record data and images in the period before and during accidents, but resistance to such technology has increased slightly on the 21% seen in the 2015 Report. The lessons are clear: where motorists understand technologies and value the benefits, they will welcome them and adopt them enthusiastically. But if the benefits of a new technology are poorly defined and users cannot easily place a value on them, there is a risk that such technologies will not appeal to mass markets and that take-up will be confined to a small number of technology enthusiasts.

84 % of drivers are in agreement that cars are safer today than in the past 23 % of motorists are opposed to systems which record data and images in the period before and during accidents

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