Kiwis fearless about driverless technology

WHAT DOES NEW ZEALAND THINK ABOUT SELF-DRIVING VEHICLES? MASSEY UNIVERSITY ACADEMICS FIND OUT

Driven By Passion For 100 Years

The adoption of automated or self-driving vehicles in Aotearoa New Zealand cities is dependent on social meanings, feelings, and cultural practices, according to new research.

PhD student Moayad Shammut and Professor Imran Muhammad from the School of People, Environment and Planning at Massey University have had their research article ‘Automated mobilities and society: Why do social meanings matter?’ published in the journal Cities

Their research explored the factors that could influence the adoption of automated vehicles (AVs) in New Zealand in the future and found that a society’s car culture is heavily influential when it comes to adopting AVs. As a result of the car culture of New Zealand, the study found that overall New Zealand society tends to be inclined towards accepting AVs with lower automation levels to maintain the ‘driving pleasure’ and to allow the experience of exploring unplanned destinations.

Study data was collected from public Facebook pages across a five-year period when the AV debate gained momentum. Qualitative content analysis was conducted for a dataset drawn from 57 posts with over 4200 comments.

Moayad says it became clear through the analysis that AVs are associated with meanings of safety, travel freedom, and control.

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