TITLE:
Self-Perception and General Perception of the Safety Impact of Autonomous Vehicles on Pedestrians, Bicyclists, and People with Ambulatory Disability
AUTHORS:
Devajyoti Deka, Charles T. Brown
KEYWORDS:
Safety Perception, Autonomous Vehicles, Pedestrian, Bicyclist, Disability
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Transportation Technologies,
Vol.11 No.3,
June
22,
2021
ABSTRACT: For
autonomous vehicles (AVs) to receive general acceptance, society must have a
positive perception about their safety impact on vulnerable road users. Using
data from a statewide random-digit-dialing telephone survey of 1001 adults,
this paper examines how New Jersey residents perceive the safety impact of AVs
on pedestrians, bicyclists, and people with ambulatory disability. It uses a combination of confirmatory factor
analysis and ordered probit models. Confirmatory factor analysis is used
to create latent variables on socioeconomic status and built environment. Three
ordered probit models are used to examine people’s perception of AV safety
impact on each of the three population
groups. The models also examine how frequent walkers, bicyclists, and
people with ambulatory disability perceive their own safety as well as the
safety of the other two groups. All three models examine the effect of
familiarity with AV, gender, age, income, education, race, ethnicity, number of
vehicles in household, political party affiliation, as well as built environment
and socioeconomic status of the municipalities where the survey respondents
live. The analysis showed that men, people with familiarity with the AV
concept, Democrats, bicyclists, and people with high household income generally
have a positive perception about the safety impact of AVs. While frequent
walkers are ambivalent about their own safety as pedestrians, bicyclists have a
positive perception about their own safety and the safety of pedestrians,
whereas people with ambulatory disability have a strong negative perception
about their own safety. The models did not show statistically significant
effects of socioeconomic status or built environment of municipalities on AV
safety perception.