A survey of 2,000 UK fleet drivers revealed more than half of younger drivers fear being replaced by self-driving vehicles. Fifteen percent of drivers said they would change jobs if forced to work with autonomous vehicles, while 23 percent wouldn’t change jobs, but they wouldn’t be happy about working with the driverless cars. Only nine percent of drivers surveyed said they would be happy about it.
As autonomous vehicles are hitting UK roadways for testing, 41 percent of professional drivers think the biggest hurdle to clear is the driverless cars interacting with regular automobiles, closely followed by 37 percents who wonder about updating infrastructure, and 34 percent concerned with liability and insurance issues.
Of those surveyed, 33 percent are concerned about the driverless car’s performance being affected by computer glitches or viruses, and 30 percent wonder if autonomous vehicles would be able to adjust to changing driving regulations.
Chief commercial officer and UK managing director of Masternaut, the company that conducted the survey, Steven Towe, said: “It’s very important that in order to get the true picture on the future of driverless cars, that we consider the potential impact on a very important group of stakeholders; the business driver, the people who use the roads every day as part of their job. We haven’t heard a great deal from professional drivers on how driverless car technology could affect them in the future, which is something that needs to be taken into consideration, especially considering that to date in 2015, 56% of new vehicle registrations have been fleet vehicles.”