Self-driving vehicles cause higher stress levels to passengers

Berlin, March 20: Travelling in vehicles with self-driving technology is experienced as more stressful by passengers than journeys with regular cars, a study published by the Kempten University of Applied Sciences said on Monday.

“We wanted to explore how the car of the future would have to be designed in order for humans to be able to trust their vehicle”, Xinhua quoted study author Bernhard Schick as saying.

Contrary to widely-received popular wisdom, however, existing technologies for autonomous driving appear to be perceived as a factor which causes additiol stress instead of being seen as a useful aid.

Schick arrived at this surprising conclusion by conducting experiments with 50 study participants, aged between 18 and 65 years, who were monitored while they drove cars with modern lane-keeping-systems.

These systems are designed to ensure drivers to not swerve from their lane when they lose concentration, for example due to fatigue.

“Stress levels rose in all test persons as soon as the lane-keeping system was activated”, Corin Seidler, a psychologist involved in the experiments, said. (IANS)