Reporting Post: Family Opinions on Self-Driving Vehicles

Building on my most recent post about self-driving vehicles, I thought it would be a good opportunity to ask my family members what their opinions were on self-driving vehicles. To elaborate, I asked the family members I live with, with them being my Mother (57), Father, (49), Sister #1(20), Sister #2 (15) and Grandmother (97). I included their ages because I feel the age gap between the older members of my family and the younger members seem to have corresponding opinions on self driving vehicles.

Between my entire family, we all had negative opinions on self driving vehicles, in which we wouldn’t use a self driving feature if it were offered on a car at this moment of time. This wasn’t suprising considering the current controversy around self driving vehicles and how some models are unreliable and can crash. What was suprising, however, was that we had evenly divided opinions when presented with the hypothetical option to switch to a 99% reliable self driving vehicle if it were available. The younger generation family members -Myself (22), Sister #1 and Sister #2- expressed positive opinions about using a car with total self control, while the older generation family members -Mother, Father and Grandmother- expressed how they would not want to switch to a fully self driving car, and how they’d stick to traditional human driver control.

Taking into consideration of my family’s age gap, I found it interesting how divisive my family was about the topic with the younger family members being okay with reliable self driving vehicles, and the older members being resistant about them. Although this simple study probably won’t reflect anything more than family opinions, perhaps it could reflect how younger people (Millenials, Gen Z and Gen Alphas) are more likely to buy a self driving car when older generations of people (Baby Boobers, Gen X) are not. Of course, a plethora of data is needed to make this assumption, so we will have to play the waiting game when more self driving vehicles are on the market. For now, my simple study could be a foreshadowing to how certain demographics of people could have corresponding opinions about using total self driving vehicles in the future.