On social interactions and the emergence of autonomous vehicles

Nowadays and in the contemporary age, the reality of an all-autonomous traffic seems closer and closer. However, this transition period casts a lot of cards onto the table. Although technology can be replacing people at the driver seat, it has not as yet gained our full trust in what concerns communication in real time and safety. Humans interact on a daily basis in their various activities, and traffic is no exception. Most actions performed on the road rely on our perception of others’ awareness and potential reactions. For instance, pedestrians seek for an eye contact before crossing the road, drivers seek for a gesture before starting a manoeuvre, and so forth. Thus, the question remaining is what happens when someone is seeking such a communication interaction and the car has no driver, nor has it someone who even knows what the car is doing. Moreover, people seating in the car might be performing any other activities but driving. Other questions also arise such whether people will accept the idea of trusting self-driving vehicles, or whether will they feel safe when walking amongst such machines. In this paper we pursue a rather social perspective and will raise questions, covering the literature so as to understand what practitioners, researchers and the industry have been doing to overcome the lack of confidence in self-driving cars and improve their trustworthiness towards more efficient and smarter mobility, as well as to identify trends and approaches to answer these emerging questions.