Paper Abstract
"Recent studies illustrate that people have negative attitudes towards utilizing autonomous systems due to lack of trust. Moreover, research shows a human-centered approach in autonomy is perceived as more trustworthy by users. In this paper, we scrutinize whether passengers expect self-driving cars (SDC) to mimic their personal driving behaviors or if they hold different expectations of how a SDC should drive. We developed a survey with 46 questions that asked 352 participants about their personal driving behaviors such as speed, lane changing, distance from a car in front, acceleration and deceleration, passing vehicles, etc. We further asked the same questions about their expectations of a SDC performing these tasks. Interestingly, we observed that most people prefer a SDC that drives like a less aggressive version of their own driving behaviors. Participants who reported they trust or somewhat trust AI, autonomous technologies, and SDCs expected a car with behaviors similar to their personal driving behaviors. We also found that the expectation of a SDC’s level of attenuated aggressiveness witnessed among all other participants was relative to their personal driving behavior aggressiveness. For instance, male drivers showed to be more aggressive drivers than female drivers, and therefore, their expectations for a SDC was slightly more aggressive. These findings can be useful in developing certain profiles or settings for SDCs, and overall they can help in designing a SDC that is perceived as trustworthy by passengers."

The full paper is available through SpringerLink, provided that you have proper access rights.