Shared-Use of Autonomous Transportation Solutions: How Ready Are We for Them?

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to assess the knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and intentions of the future autonomous vehicle users, considering also socio-demographic attributes and mobility needs. The analyzed data are based on two surveys; one, conducted on car-pooling and car-sharing systems, thus addressing the private traveling; the other, conducted on public transport systems. Both surveys examined the expected benefits, the users’ concerns and their willingness to use the systems, under different levels of automation, based on international standards. Taking into account that fully automated private or public vehicles are not widely available in market, with the exception of some examples of fully-automated trams and pilot implementations, users’ acceptance was determined and analysed a priori, meaning that the majority of the respondents evaluated the shared autonomous transportation solutions before testing them. Analysis identified similarities and differences between private and public autonomous vehicles and assessed the level of possible usage by the travelers. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.