Self-driving cars have Michigan residents “uncomfortable.” Image: Wikimedia Commons
By Eric Freedman
We haven’t quite made it to flying cars, but driverless cars could soon be a thing.
Michiganders are wary about it.
A recent survey shows that widespread publicity about autonomous cars has directed public attention to questions about the safety of driverless vehicles.
Despite qualms about safety, however, a majority of those polled “accept that this will be how people get around in the near future,” according to a Nov. 3-5 telephone survey of 600 Michigan adults. The poll, taken of people who said they expect to vote in the November 2016 election, has a margin of error of 4 percent.
Less than a third of those surveyed said they were very comfortable or somewhat comfortable about having them on the state’s roads. Slightly more than half described themselves as very uncomfortable with the idea.
And asked about safety, 27 percent of participants said they think autonomous cars would make driving safer or much safer. In contrast, about 56 percent said they would be more dangerous than cars driven by people.
Despite such widely held qualms, those surveyed sounded resigned to the eventual advent of driverless cars. More than a quarter predicted they’ll be common five to 10 years from now, and another 31 percent predicted they’d be common 10 to 20 years in the future.
In releasing the survey, Public Sector Consultants and Michigan Public Radio said, “That buys humanity at least a few years to figure out how to prevent the cyborg invasion that is sure to follow.”
This story was produced by Capital News Service
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