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UF Health gauges seniors’ opinions on self-driving vehicles

Recently, local seniors lined up outside UF Health Precision Health Research in The Villages, eager to get inside an empty shuttle. None of them were driving. That was what made it exciting. Over multiple days last week, seniors participated in a study spearheaded by the University of Florida’s College of Public Health and Health Professions researchers.

Webinar: What do Drivers Really Think about Autonomous Vehicles?

The deployment of autonomous vehicle (AV) technologies may hold important health and safety benefits for drivers across the driving lifespan. However, such benefits can materialize only if transportation users are willing to embrace the emerging technologies. Earlier studies document a wide variance in acceptance practices, based solely on surveys of drivers. This research used a combined approach of surveys and lived experiences of drivers engaging with AV technologies to examine technology acceptance and adoption of AV technologies. The webinar summarizes findings from the analysis of younger and middle-aged drivers’ perceptions of AVs before and after a) “driving” an interactive high-fidelity RTI driving simulator, in Level 4 autonomous mode, and b) riding in an autonomous shuttle (AS). Moreover, it discusses predictive models of facilitators and barriers for AV acceptance built from data collected from younger and middle-aged drivers (N=106) and older drivers (N=104). The findings reveal important foundational information about driver acceptance, their intention to use AVs, barriers to AV technology, and well-being related to AV technology across the driving lifespan.