Are You Ready for Autonomous Driving? The Role of Experiential Learning in Enhancing Trust and Understandability

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have transformed transportation, yet human drivers remain essential. In level 3 autonomous vehicles, drivers must respond to takeover requests and share driving responsibilities, but effective strategies for training them remain poorly understood. This study examines how learning style (experiential vs. observational) and message framing (gain vs. loss) influence drivers' learning experience and performance in autonomous driving. In a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment with 121 participants, experiential learning was more effective than observational learning in enhancing drivers' social presence, trust, and understanding of their roles. Loss-framed messages led to higher cognitive load, greater risk perception, and faster reaction times than gain-framed messages. Learning style and message framing interacted to affect trust, and trust mediated the effect of learning style on understandability. These findings integrate learning theory with message framing and offer practical guidance for designing safety training programs for autonomous driving.