Research by Opentext has revealed two thirds of people believe there will be more driverless vehicles on the UK’s roads than normal vehicles in just 15 years. They also think that the improvement of safety would be a major advantage.
OpenText surveyed 2,000 people about their attitudes towards driverless cars and although feelings were mostly positive, with 42% of individuals saying autonomous cars will make roads a lot safer, 46% commented they would not feel very safe as passenger in a driverless car, so there’s some doubt as to whether people will actually be happy buying them.
The vice-president of sales for Opentext in Northern Europe, Mark Bridger, said that the globe was on the cusp of driverless cars becoming a reality.
He also added that artificial intelligence technology was going to play a fundamental role in these vehicles being bought by British clients. The technological achievements in the domain would lead to an increasing level of trust among UK citizens when it comes to driverless cars, especially regarding the improvement of road safety.
“The technological advances in AI will lead to a growing level of trust among British citizens when it comes to autonomous vehicles, particularly in regard to improving road safety,” Bridger explained. “For this to be achieved, the automotive industry will need to manage and analyse their datasets to identify how the car is performing and, more importantly, alert them to possible safety issues.”
Highways England, which is responsible for England’s core A and M road network’ management published a strategy for innovation, setting out its goals for connected vehicles and autonomous technology last year. It has supported a government requirement to test fully driverless cars on the road network during 2017.