As outlined in our recent blog, the Institute for Transport Studies at University of Leeds have been researching public views of Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs). In particular, we explored views of privately-owned and shared CAVs, as the highest carbon reduction benefits of CAVs arise from their being shared. Shared vehicles can transport many more people throughout the day, requiring a smaller vehicle fleet. The latter can include ‘taxis’, car clubs, and public transport modes. This Working Paper shares their qualitative work package.
The paper reports on research activities undertaken in 2024 and contains extensive details of the findings. Eight ‘deliberative workshops’ were recruited and consisted of two activities. Discussion groups deliberated how 100% CAV futures would be different to today’s transport system and society. In small breakout groups, they explored how CAV futures might affect society more broadly, and specifically how they would affect travel behaviour and the carbon impacts of land passenger transport. The respondents were asked to think about how they might engage with CAVs, as private owners or as users of shared vehicles. Following the deliberations, a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) form of assessment exercise was carried out. This guided the public in assessing different vehicle mixes or transport modes (conventional and autonomous) against each other.
The research aimed at anticipating the broadest range of public views, rather than the most representative. We purposively sampled participants from groups likely to hold stronger views on cars, innovative technologies, and sharing. This was intended to capture views and opinions that are not tested in survey research, and which might not arise from qualitative research with the general public. This helps policymakers and the industry to understand a wider range of opinion and concerns, as well as identify how (un)popular the most carbon-reducing mode of CAV roll-out – shared vehicles – might be.
The discussion groups raised many more concerns than benefits, and hardly mentioned that passengers could perform other activities while on board. Their focuses did not reflect how developers and policy-makers think about CAVs. Cost was not a major issue in discussions, although there was much agreement that CAVs would be convenient. The discussions revealed conditional rather than outright acceptance. There were concerns about who might control the vehicles and uncertainty about a relatively unknown new technology. Without fully understanding CAVs, people fell back on their experiences of current conventional modes of transport. They assumed that the autonomous transport system would likely reproduce the issues of the current system. Politically, there was a suggestion that only a top-down state programme would successfully roll out CAVs, and this was not seen as the UK’s political culture. The working paper reports on the content of all discussions under different themes.
The MCDA exercises forced participants to evaluate CAV futures in a more disinterested and ‘rational’ way. They chose options to assess, criteria to assess them with, assigned weights to the criteria and scored their options. The choice and weightings of criteria reveal what the public feels is important about transport systems and modes. The most popular and highly-weighted criteria were safety, affordability, convenience, accessibility and environmental benefits. Car fans weighted convenience more highly; while other groups prioritised other areas. Across all groups, autonomous, shared, and non-car/private options were scored the highest, even by car fans, which surprised them. Rational assessment appeared to overcome their own preferences.
The findings appear to offer support for shared CAVs over privately-owned modes, in the abstract. For policy-makers, there are warnings that people do not really understand CAVs, and that people want the inequalities of current transport systems to be avoided in the future.
Full report by Noel Cass, Linos Brown, Theresa Nelson, Eeshan Bhaduri, Jillian Anable, and Zia Wadud (Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds).