Report: Women Don’t Trust Self-Driving Cars
Photo: © General Motors
Whether you believe it or not, women and men are different in a lot of ways. We could get into fights about the existence of a gender pay gap, but thanks to AAA, the MIT Age Lab, and Axios, one gap we don’t have to debate is which gender doesn’t trust autonomous vehicles.
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According to AAA, about 71 percent of people they recently surveyed are still afraid to ride in fully self-driving cars. When you compare the two genders, women are most anxious, with 79 percent of females compared to 62 percent of men admitting that they’re worried. Axios reports that another study by MIT’s Age Lab found that only 14.3 percent of women, compared to 30 percent of men, were comfortable with a fully autonomous car, while 53 percent of women vs. 32 percent of men would want a self-driving vehicle to still have a “help driver” behind the wheel.
Besides a general distrust of the engineering, a self-driving vehicle carrying more than one person presents a difficult situation to a female traveling alone. Women are taught to be on alert when there are fewer people around, so it’s not surprising that they are wary of technology that would isolate them. Whereas a city bus has a driver to witness or report any incidents, a self-driving pod would have no one to help if a fellow passenger attacked. There’s also no one to hold accountable for a dangerous or unsatisfactory ride, and no way to intervene if the vehicles move into an unsavory area of town.
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We’ll be watching this technology steadily roll out and see if any companies make move to make sure all of their riders feel safe and ready for the future.
News Source: Axios
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