Do You Want Your Autonomous Car To Drive Like You?

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether autonomous cars should mimic users' driving styles, revealing users prefer more defensive driving than they themselves exhibit, and preferences vary by scenario, suggesting personalized driving style learning.

Contribution

It challenges the assumption that users want autonomous cars to drive like them, showing a preference for more defensive styles and scenario-dependent preferences.

Findings

Users prefer more defensive driving than their own.

Users believe they drive like their own style, but actually prefer more defensive.

Driving style preferences vary across different scenarios.

Abstract

With progress in enabling autonomous cars to drive safely on the road, it is time to start asking how they should be driving. A common answer is that they should be adopting their users' driving style. This makes the assumption that users want their autonomous cars to drive like they drive - aggressive drivers want aggressive cars, defensive drivers want defensive cars. In this paper, we put that assumption to the test. We find that users tend to prefer a significantly more defensive driving style than their own. Interestingly, they prefer the style they think is their own, even though their actual driving style tends to be more aggressive. We also find that preferences do depend on the specific driving scenario, opening the door for new ways of learning driving style preference.