Reality Check: How Do Real-World Users Experience Current Automated Driving Systems?

Most of today’s studies investigating the driver-vehicle interaction of automated driving systems are conducted in simulated environments like driving simulators or virtual reality. While this simulation-based experimental research can produce valuable and valid results, it is at the same time limited by the inherent lack of realism. Important insights into real-world driving experiences and repeated system usage are rarely collected due to the constraints imposed by time and financial resources. In a multi-step research approach, we aim to connect the AutoUI research with real-world users. In the first step, we conducted qualitative interviews with 10 experienced, tech-savvy users of current automated driving systems (Waymo, Cruise, Tesla) and clustered the results into the most important issues from a human factor perspective.