B.C. drivers unsure about self-driving cars: UBC study

You’re driving downtown, look over your shoulder to the car next to you, and the driver’s seat is completely empty.

How does the idea of self-driving cars make you feel?

A recent study conducted by the Research on Active Transportation Lab (REACT) in the faculty of applied science at UBC shows people in B.C. are split on the safety aspect of self-driving cars.

More than 40 per cent of study participants believe that pedestrians will be less safe and have less comfort with self-driving vehicles compared to regular human-driven vehicles.

The study included more than 1,000 participants from across the province.

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UBC engineering professor and REACT investigator Alex Bigazzi says a lot of respondents’ concerns were around whether or not the vehicle detects pedestrians.

“We know that in interactions between human-driven cars and pedestrians and cyclists, there’s a lot of nonverbal communication that happens with eye contact and looks and appearances that allows pedestrians and cyclists to anticipate the intentions of the vehicles,” he told CityNews.

Bigazzi notes that denser urban environments, like Metro Vancouver, could make it more challenging to introduce self-driving cars.

“It makes sense because the Lower Mainland has a more complex multimodal transportation system. There’s more competition for road space. There’s more people outside of motor vehicles that will be interacting with self-driving vehicles,” he said.

Meanwhile, most respondents think there should be rules around driverless cars and how they function on public roads.

They include self-driving cars adopting more “conservative road behaviour,” using external “communication features” to let drivers know of their automation, having a human always in the driver’s seat in case of emergency, and avoiding pedestrian priority zones, such as school zones.

Bigazzi believes the best way to approach the introduction of self-driving cars is to have a gradual launch, to address those safety concerns.

“At this critical point in the introduction of automated vehicles, it is essential to understand and consider their effects on everyone who shares city streets – especially pedestrians,” he said.