Automated Vehicles (AVs) have made huge strides towards large scale deployment.
Despite this progress, AVs continue to make mistakes, some resulting in death. While
some mistakes are avoidable, others are hard to avoid even by highly-skilled drivers. As
these mistakes continue to shape attitudes towards AVs, we need to understand ...
Automated Vehicles (AVs) have made huge strides towards large scale deployment.
Despite this progress, AVs continue to make mistakes, some resulting in death. While
some mistakes are avoidable, others are hard to avoid even by highly-skilled drivers. As
these mistakes continue to shape attitudes towards AVs, we need to understand whether
people differentiate between them. We ask the following two questions. When an AV
makes a mistake, does the perceived difficulty or novelty of the situation predict blame
attributed to it? How does that blame attribution compare to a human driving a car?
Through two studies we find that the amount of blame people attribute to AVs and
human drivers is sensitive to situation difficulty. However, while some situations could
be more difficult for AVs and others for human drivers, people blamed AVs more,
regardless. Our results provide novel insights in understanding psychological barriers
influencing the public’s view of AVs.