Trust in Automation – Before and After the Experience of Take-over Scenarios in a Highly Automated Vehicle

Highly automated vehicles (Level 3, [1]) are likely to enter the market within the next decade. By removing the driver from the driver-vehicle system, positive impacts, for instance on road-safety or fuel consumption, are expected. These predicted effects can only arise if automated vehicles are accepted by society. Trust as well as the attitude towards technology has been found to be a precursor in the acceptance formation process. Therefore, we conducted a driving simulator experiment within the interdisciplinary research group at the Munich Center of Technology in Society (MCTS) in order to investigate how the experience of automated driving will change trust in automation and the attitude of the driver towards automation. The sample consisted of 72 participants between 19 and 79 years (M = 44.97, SD = 22.16). Participants completed a questionnaire before and after the driving simulator experience to assess trust in automation, safety gain, intention to use and other constructs in order to analyze the change caused by the driving simulation experience. Besides participants’ ratings from the questionnaires, their gaze behavior was recorded in order to measure a change of trust by a change in scanning behavior. The participants drove highly automated on a three lane highway at a speed of 120 km/h. As critical situations are expected to have a significant impact on trust in automation, the participants experienced three take-over scenarios (system limits). Results indicate that the driving experience increased self-reported trust in automation and lead to a decrease in other measured constructs like safety gain. Older participants rated the vehicle automation more positively than younger drivers. Horizontal gaze behavior could not be confirmed as a metric for measuring trust in automation, although this measure behaved as expected and analogous to the self-reported level of trust.