Four out of five people ‘think autonomous vehicles are a good idea’

A new report from Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) and Royal Holloway, University of London, has revealed that four out of five of the people surveyed (81 per cent) are open to the idea of autonomous vehicles (AVs) on the UK’s roads. The ‘Attitudes to AVs’ report shows that many people feel that AVs would help deliver a wide range of environmental, social and economic benefits. In addition, the levels of trust in AVs among the people surveyed was also shown to be fairly high, with 55 per cent of responde
August 23, 2017 Read time: 2 mins

A new report from Transport Research Laboratory (491 TRL) and Royal Holloway, University of London, has revealed that four out of five of the people surveyed (81 per cent) are open to the idea of autonomous vehicles (AVs) on the UK’s roads.

The ‘Attitudes to AVs’ report shows that many people feel that AVs would help deliver a wide range of environmental, social and economic benefits.

In addition, the levels of trust in AVs among the people surveyed was also shown to be fairly high, with 55 per cent of respondents agreeing that they can trust an AV and 23 per cent saying they ‘somewhat’ agreed they would trust an AV to deliver them to their destination safely.

Chief scientist and research director, Transportation at TRL, Alan Stevens, commented: “While this survey looks at a relatively small and self-selecting sample of people, it is pleasing to see that so many of them were open to using an autonomous vehicle.

“Of course, there were also concerns expressed around certain parameters of an AV’s operation, namely the security of the software and what data the vehicle would store. However, these are issues that we are already beginning to address, with work taking place on various projects and trials.”

The study was run in conjunction with Royal Holloway as part of a larger project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and took the form of an online survey, which received 233 responses.

Location Based Systems

For more information on companies in this article

TRL

Related Content

  • Put ‘people, not cars' first in transport systems, says UN Environment chief
    October 21, 2016
    Lack of investment in safe walking and cycling infrastructure not only contributes to the deaths of millions of people in traffic accidents on unsafe roads and poorly designed roadways, but also overlooks a great opportunity to boost the fight against climate change, according to a new UN Environment report. In Global Outlook on Walking and Cycling, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) claims that greater investment in such infrastructure could help save millions of lives and reduce emissions of global w
    Read More
  • TRL pledges support for global initiative at UN Climate Summit
    October 2, 2014
    The UK’s Transport Research Laboratory (TRL)’s chief executive Rob Wallis, attending the United Nations Climate Summit in New York last week, was delighted to be able to pledge TRL’s support to the UEMI initiative, by UN-Habitat. “The UEMI initiative, aimed at substantially increasing the adoption of electric vehicles within urban environments, aligns strongly with TRL’s own strategy and current activities,” Wallis explained. “TRL is actively engaged in leading innovative research programmes to understan
    Read More
  • IT security? Get your head in the cloud
    January 23, 2020
    Cloud-based operations have been around for a decade or so - and Andy Souders of All Traffic Solutions suggests they are increasingly viable solutions for the transportation sector
    Read More
  • Taking the long view of ITS
    March 24, 2015
    Caroline Visser believes the ITS industry must present a coherent case for consideration of the technology to become part of transport policy and planning. As ITS advisor and road finance director for the International Road Federation (IRF) in Geneva, Caroline Visser is well placed to evaluate quantifying the benefits of ITS implementation – a topic about which there is little agreement and even less consistency. She is pressing to get some consistency in the evaluation of ITS deployments through the use of
    Read More

Highlighted Content