Self-driving technologies need the help of the public: A narrative review of the evidence

TL;DR

This paper reviews evidence on public trust and engagement in self-driving technology, emphasizing the importance of aligning public perception with technological development to foster acceptance and responsible use.

Contribution

It introduces a scalable model for education and engagement to improve public understanding and trust in self-driving systems, based on a narrative review of existing evidence.

Findings

Mismatch in perception can lead to misuse or disuse of systems

Industrial experts often misunderstand public concerns

Targeted engagement improves trust and public participation

Abstract

If public trust is lost in a new technology early in its life cycle it can take much more time for the benefits of that technology to be realised. Eventually tens-of-millions of people will collectively have the power to determine self-driving technology success of failure driven by their perception of risk, data handling, safety, governance, accountability, benefits to their life and more. This paper reviews the evidence on safety critical technology covering trust, engagement, and acceptance. The paper takes a narrative review approach concluding with a scalable model for self-driving technology education and engagement. The paper find that if a mismatch between the publics perception and expectations about self driving systems emerge it can lead to misuse, disuse, or abuse of the system. Furthermore we find from the evidence that industrial experts often misunderstand what matters to the public, users, and stakeholders. However we find that engagement programmes that develop approaches to defining the right information at the right time, in the right format orientated around what matters to the public creates the potential for ever more sophisticated conversations, greater trust, and moving the public into a progressive more active role of critique and advocacy. This work has been undertaken as part of the Partners for Automated Vehicle Education (PAVE) United Kingdom programme.