Research on the acceptance of new technologies is important. This particularly applies to connected and autonomous driving: On the one hand, safety and comfort increase; on the other, autonomous driving in road traffic means radical changes to the previous behaviours in traffic. One component of the DiaMANT project (a dialogue for automated, connected and electric mobility) was to allow users to experience autonomous driving as part of a roadshow and to collect the opinions of the future users. The roadshow was not only present at technology trade fairs with rather tech-savvy visitors, but also stopped at the Federal Garden Show in Heilbronn. The evaluation of the surveys revealed some expected results, for example that the acceptance of new solutions decreases with the age of the respondents, but also some exciting new findings, for example that the technology is generally trusted, but that drivers are still desired in possible autonomous public transport systems for reasons of perceived safety.
Beyond the questions on attitudes toward autonomous driving in general, the DiaMANT project also aimed to collect opinions on the actual use of an autonomous public transport system in road traffic. In this regard, however, it became clear that there remains a significant gap between the desire for autonomous vehicles as part of the regular public transport systems and the current state of the art. Unfortunately, the idea of developing an autonomous vehicle and using it in road traffic could not be realised as planned.
