What Do We Tell the Drivers? Toward Minimum Driver Training Standards for Partially Automated Cars

Each year, millions of automobile crashes occur when drivers fail to notice and respond to conflicts with other vehicles, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Today, manufacturers race to deploy automation technologies to help eliminate these mishaps. To date, little effort has been made to educate drivers about how these systems work or how they affect driver behavior. Driver education for automated systems amounts to additional pages in an owner’s manual that is known to be a seldom-used glove box reference. In this article, we review the history of automation deployed in the airline cockpit decades ago. We describe how automation helped avoid many common crash scenarios but at the same time gave rise to new kinds of crashes. It was only following a concerted effort to educate pilots about the automation, about themselves, and about the concept of a human-automation team that we reached the near-zero crash rate we enjoy today. Drawing parallels between the automation systems, the available pilot and driver research, and operational experience in both airplanes and automobiles, we outline knowledge standards for drivers of partially automated cars and argue that the safe operation of these vehicles will be enhanced by drivers’ incorporation of this knowledge in their everyday travels.