Consumer Education and Training for Vehicle Automation: Outcomes from an Expert Workshop

Abstract

Introduction

Advanced in-vehicle technology is becoming more commonplace in the U.S. passenger vehicle fleet. Under limited circumstances, driver support features such as adaptive cruise control (ACC), lane centering assist (LCA), and other forms of vehicle automation can now perform parts of the driving task. It follows that these features can change drivers’ roles, including adopting passive system and environment monitoring strategies and the ability to physically disengage from portions of the driving task. While intended to promote driver comfort and convenience, while maintaining reasonable levels of safety, these features are complex and currently have a number of important limitations that govern their appropriate and safe use. For example, some systems have limitations in adverse weather or road surface conditions, in situations of high glare, or other circumstances.

Encouraging driver understanding of technology constraints may help mitigate overreliance on the technology and other challenges when encountering hazards. Unfortunately, drivers may exhibit poor understanding of their roles with respect to driving automation, which may influence appropriate use. Ultimately, the goal is to promote appropriate use of technology and consumer education is just one means to that end. Methods to improve understanding through education and through human-machine interface design have been the subject of recent studies.

Methodology

A workshop was organized by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety (AAAFTS), the Toyota Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC), and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The one-day workshop was hosted in May 2023 on the University of Wisconsin campus and convened 21 invited individuals from academia, research organizations, industry, government, and advocacy organizations. The workshop included interactive discussions to inform consumer education research and help advance science and knowledge in this space.

Key Findings

Results and discussion topics were captured in the research brief. Various topics and themes raised by the group were arranged into broader categories and represented in a graphical framework, which is shown below.

In general, non-user stakeholders included the research community, the designers or developers and marketing groups from OEMs, government entities and policy makers, as well as automobile dealerships. The themes that related to this stakeholder group included the following:

• Communication between stakeholders and end users, including knowing how end users perceive and use systems and what they have trouble with.
• More sharing of ideas and updates among the research community and other stakeholders (under the guise of meta-research).
• Consider and adopt multidisciplinary approaches (different perspectives) to address issues.
• Need for shared and accessible resources, including access to the state of the art for researchers and consumers having access to training when they need it.
• Need for stakeholders to continue to consider alternative perspectives and needs (i.e., putting themselves in others’ shoes).
• Design systems to afford and promote appropriate use by operators.
• Need for balance between marketing approaches and appeals for safety.
• OEMs should promote vehicles and technology more as a guardian (versus chauffeur).
• Need for understanding that words matter, that information needs to be communicated to consumers/drivers effectively and accurately.
• System designers/developers/manufacturers should respect the user, and not overestimate or underestimate their capabilities.
• Map business cases to key dimensions to prioritize resource allocation and to evaluate return on investment.

Several themes related to the end user or operator in the system:

• Consider the motivation for the operator to take training or educational offerings (this can also encompass behavioral intentions and social norms).
• Consider generational differences in learning preferences, including the sources, habits, etc.
• Keep all users in mind, over the life of the vehicle and not just the person who buys from dealership (e.g., used car market, rentals, other members of owner/purchaser’s household).

Many keywords related to the training itself and to the content, the medium or format, and the timing or frequency of the training. These included the following:

• Need to scale education across the diversity of implementations, considering contextual factors and specific systems.
• Content of education or training needs to balance specific versus general system information.
• Adoption of prototype learning versus exemplar concept could help generalize to systems/situations or aid in understanding of underlying technology.
• Education/training and design efforts need to work together (i.e., a chicken and egg situation).
• Approaches should encompass multiple touchpoints to various end users throughout their lifetime (or the vehicle lifetime) and/or be tailored by use of vehicle data (e.g., what systems have been used).
• Need to provide more support or scaffolding while training/educating operators.
• Need to figure out the information that someone needs at the time that they need it (i.e., just-in-time) with responses being contingent upon use-case scenarios.