ABSTRACT
New vehicle technology essentially means putting drivers in a situation of uncertainty and incomplete knowledge, asking them to place their lives in the hands of unknown technologies, potentially, to put themselves ‘at risk or in vulnerable positions by delegating responsibility for actions to another party’ (Lee and See, 2004, p. 53). Whether we intend it or not, we are asking drivers to trust the vehicle systems we are designing. If they do not, these vehicle systems will, to use Parasuraman’s (1997) words, be disused, misused or even abused, yielding unexpected outcomes with potentially serious cost and safety implications (Merritt et al., 2013).
