Poll: Majority of Americans worried about sharing roads with driverless cars

A recent poll found that a majority of Americans are worried about operating cars on the same roads as driverless vehicles.

Sixty-four percent of those surveyed said they are concerned about sharing the streets with driverless vehicles, according to a poll from Advocates for Highway & Auto Safety.

Thirty-four percent of Americans surveyed said they were not concerned, while 2 percent of those polled said they did not know.

Results of the survey come after the House last year passed the bipartisan Self Drive Act, meant to speed up the development of driverless vehicles and provide a set of federal laws for the technology.

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After receiving approval from the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, a similar bill in the Senate had been pushed to 2018, Bloomberg BNA reported in December.

“These poll results should be an urgent wake-up call to change course,” Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety President Cathy Chase said in a release.

“One of the most important findings of this poll is that nearly two-thirds of respondents are concerned about sharing the road with driverless cars. Today, we urge our nation’s leaders to listen carefully to the concerns of the American people and to take an immediate course correction to address significant safety shortcomings and serious public concerns revealed in the poll.” 

A majority of those polled, 73 percent, also back Transportation Department safety standards for driverless vehicles. Nearly a quarter of Americans, 23 percent, oppose the department’s mandated safety features. Four percent of those polled said they did not know.

Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety commissioned the poll, which was conducted by ORC International. The poll of 1,005 individuals across the country was conducted Dec. 7–10 and has a margin of error of 3.09 percentage points.