"How to behave as an automatic car so that humans like them - and why this question?"
The development and introduction of automatic cars has been based on the assumption that
automatic driving is safer than human driving, thus decreasing crash risk. The first part of the
talk examines this assumption taking different levels of automation into account, showing that
it will probably take decades before this positive effect will arise. Thus, from a buyer’s point of
view, automatic cars will have to provide other positive features besides safety. These include
personal benefits like being able to safely engage in other activities while driving. However,
from a user experience perspective it should also be fun to be driven by an automatic car – or,
at least, it should be a comfortable, pleasant experience. This is especially true for the passenger
or buyer of the automatic car, but also for other traffic participants interacting with this car. The
driving behavior of the automatic cars plays a crucial role to achieve this. Results from
experimental studies including two basic driving scenarios are presented to give an idea of how
to behave as an automatic car so that humans like them. It will be interesting to see, whether
this will really be a sufficient motivation for a wide-spread acceptance of automatic cars given
their likely cost-range.