ACA France conducted a survey on autonomous vehicles

The Automobile Club Association of France (ACA France) published results of their survey on autonomous vehicles. During 6 months (between June and December 2019), more than 1,000 French consumers participated in the survey and provided the ACA France with their opinion on autonomous vehicles and their stakes in terms of regulations, insurance, ethics, and maintenance.

The survey had the following goals:

• Raise awareness among the general public about issues that are still very abstract today.
• Identify the expectations and fears of French drivers and more generally of citizens to identify the levers of the acceptability of these future developments.
• Set the outline of what could be the future “Highway Code for Robots” (“Code de la route des robots”) which would meet the need for standards expressed by the citizens consulted. 

Overall the results of the survey show that consumers are in favour of autonomous vehicles but they would like to have some safeguards in place. The majority of respondents understand autonomous vehicles within the traditional notion of driving: for instance, users of autonomous vehicles should be considered as drivers (51,2%), and have a driving licence (68%). In addition, 76,9% of respondents think passengers of an autonomous vehicle should designate a ‘person in charge’ that would intervene in case of deactivation of the autonomous mode.

The survey results also confirm that consumers are highly concerned about the use of their data: while they accept that their autonomous vehicle collects data, consumers want to have a say on who should receive data and more than 80% of respondents are against an automatic transfer of data to the vehicle manufacturer.

A summary of the survey is available here (in French).