Come together: an exploration on social driving behaviour of automated vehicles

Interaction between road users is a fundamental part of the traffic system. The advent of automated vehicles (AVs) has given rise to requirements for interactions between AVs and other road users, expressed in high-level terms like ‘demonstrate anticipatory behaviour’, ‘not confusing other road users’, and ‘being predictable and manageable for other road users’. Operationalizing these social driving behaviours requires social science knowledge on human interaction. However, translating social driving behaviour requirements unambiguously to the engineering domain necessitates that social scientists have a rudimentary understanding of the language of engineers (and vice versa). The present study seeks to accommodate interdisciplinary collaboration between social scientists and engineers by providing insight into current AV technological capabilities with regards to social driving behaviour and road safety, and their development in the near future. To this end, an exploratory interview study was performed with 7 engineers with backgrounds in industry, academia, research institutes, and/or vehicle authorities. The engineers provided several real-world examples of implications of AV algorithms on social driving behaviour. Thematic analysis of the interview transcripts resulted in clusters of themes relating to the product development process: requirements (i.e., societal, legal, customers), development (i.e., process, implementation), and evaluation (i.e., assessment, monitoring). Choices made in each of these phases appear to influence the final behaviour of automated vehicles in traffic. Knowledge on social driving behaviour and its impact on traffic safety can guide these choices to ensure safe operation of AVs within the social environment of traffic.