Drive Right: Shaping Public's Trust, Understanding, and Preference Towards Autonomous Vehicles Using a Virtual Reality Driving Simulator

While autonomous vehicles are being increasingly introduced into our lives, people's misunderstanding and mistrust have become the key factors hindering the acceptance of these technologies. In response to this problem, proper work must be done to increase public's understanding and awareness of self-driving and help them rationally evaluate the system. The method proposed in this paper is a virtual reality driving simulator which serves as a low-cost and reliable platform for autonomous vehicle demonstration and education. To test its validity, we recruited 36 participants and conducted a test drive using three different scenarios. The results have shown that our simulator successfully increased participants' understanding and awareness of the autonomous system and changed their attitude to be more positive. The methodology and findings presented in this paper can be further explored by policy makers, driving schools, and auto manufacturers to improve the legislative and technical process in the field of autonomous driving.