Enhance driver behaviour and Public Acceptance of Connected and Autonomous vehicLes

Project Information

PAsCAL

Grant agreement ID: 815098

DOI

10.3030/815098

Project closed

EC signature date 6 May 2019

Start date 1 June 2019

End date 30 November 2022

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport

Total cost

€ 3 974 041,25

EU contribution

€ 3 974 041,25

Coordinated by

LUXEMBOURG INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Luxembourg

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - PAsCAL (Enhance driver behaviour and Public Acceptance of Connected and Autonomous vehicLes)

Reporting period: 2020-12-01 to 2022-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The PAsCAL project is how to improve the understanding and the implications of the Connected and Automated Vehicles on Society. It creates a "Guide to Autonomy" to capture this new knowledge.
Outcomes of the project also contribute on the training of future drivers and passengers and can help decision makers to move towards the new forms of individual and collective mobility made possible by the spread of driverless cars.

The vision of PAsCAL is to develop an interdisciplinary mix of innovative tools to:
-Explain what CAV are and how they work,
-Remove issues that hinder people’s acceptance of CAV,
-Assess the impact of connected transport on society,
-Educate future drivers and non-drivers on safe, responsible and informed spread of CAV
-Design effective recommendations and guidelines on guiding people to autonomy.

This vision is reflected in the 7 project objectives.

1) to develop a europe-wide multi-dimensional map of public acceptance for higher levels of connectivity and automation in transport for different user groups including current non-drivers
2) to optimise and validate connected and automated transport solutions for current non drivers
3) to analyse driver’s behaviour in different kind of CAV scenarios
4) to identify the impact factors which reflect identified issues and lessons learned
5) to investigate new driver training needs and also certification requirements
6) to assess attitudes towards shared modes of transport and the inclusion of CAV as part of some fleets
7) to evaluate the impacts of the PAsCAL solutions by developing guidelines and recommendations on common issues , approaches and lessons learned across several transport modes and targeting different private and public stakeholders.

By fulfilling these objectives and finally delivering 109 recommendations, PAsCAL has contributed to improve the public acceptance of CAVs and enhance the behaviour of the CAV drivers.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

To fulfill these objectives, PASCAL ran a series of activities and outcomes.

Over 6000 persons participated in the surveys that allowed us to get the perception and expectation of citizens from 11 countries regarding the CAV technologies.

165 persons have experimented the 5 simulators covering a broad range of criteria and dedicated to different Research Questions. These experiments provided us a better understanding of the reasons for the distrust towards CAV’s expressed by many citizens. They also highlighted people reactions and behaviours in 20 simulated scenarios related to CAV and were also useful for some conclusions to be drawn in term of vehicle design, human machine interface layouts, and also some more holistic organization of the transport system.

Training content has been updated and tested by more than 380 participants in the 2 driving schools partners in Italy and UK taking into account requirements that can help to best train CAV’users and current drivers .

5 real transport pilots have been implemented and conducted in the frame of 11 validation activities in different European countries gathering 845 participants.
These pilot projects focused on high-capacity autonomous buses, user training to driving schools and driving academies, different types of connected shared vehicles , autonomous bus lines, and last but not least applications that allows people with disabilities to travel thanks to new autonomous driving technologies within a transport network.

All the new knowledge collected thanks to the different tools presented before will be analysed in term of impacts and incorporated in the "Guide to Autonomy", containing 109 recommendations made available to all relevant stakeholders.

Finally, more than 700 outreach activities were led in order to, in one hand disseminate the Project outcomes and in the other hand to ensure that they will be successfully exploited and adopted by the stakeholders during and after the end of the project.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The impact areas described in the DoW are indicated as well as the impacts obtained.

IM01: Support the integration of higher levels of connectivity and automation in transport.
The project has delivered a Guide2Autonomy with 109 recoomendations for the integration of higher levels of CAV, user acceptance and assuring public interests. This was based through a large literature inventory and analysis of public acceptance of CAV, qualitative research through a set of expert interviews and a large-scale EU wide survey. The data analysis led to the foundation of the simulators, training tools and pilot indicator and evaluation frameworks.

IM02 – Contribute to improved levels of safety and security in all modes of transport, in line with the Transport White Paper 2011
Next to the adequate functioning of any CAV development, at the heart of the PAsCAL indicator framework is set the need for assured and if possible improved safety and security levels in all modes as a result of higher levels of connected and automated transport.

The set evaluation and indicator frameworks of the simulations, development of training and pilot testing were in this regard building upon the adopted ‘zero-vision’ approach.
Therewith, PAsCAL were able to provide feedback on the safety criteria including vulnerable users and work towards a comprehensive strategy for people's safety inside and outside, training and education of all road users to improve awareness of surrounding environments.

IM03 - Contribute to the possible reduction of cost for industry and public authorities through an improved understanding of requirements and needs of different types of "drivers"/users in the context of connectivity and automation in all modes of transport.
The PAsCAL project provided an understanding of the requirements in terms of “cost acceptance” and “willingness to pay” indicators. Included in the analysis of the PAsCAL simulation, training tools and pilots led to recommendations for the CAV solutions development and services provision.

IM04 - Contribute to a better user acceptance of innovative, cooperative, connected and highly automated transport systems.
PAsCAL created a robust scientific methodology to understand present and future issues in CAV acceptance and applied it to more than 6000 people in 11 countries. On the basis of this work the PAsCAL consortium developed the scenarios and simulated environments to test the effectiveness of different measures to mitigate those issues.PAsCAL put in place 702 dissemination activities to share the findings.

IM05 - Enhance driver awareness and behaviour in a range of complex / urban operating environments.
Dissemination activities contributed to reach the project expected impacts by supporting and increasing academic and industry awareness on CAV, user acceptance and public interest. In addition, the exploitation tasks allowed to bring forward 12 PAsCAL exploitable results that have high chances to reach the market and enable those results to reach higher technology readiness levels and therewith enhance CAV related driver awareness and behaviour.

PAsCAL already contribute to the acceleration of the perspective of inclusive mobility by involving over 232 disabled travellers in the PAsCAL assessment of the users’ needs as well as 237 participants in the Pilot5 that formed the basis of the recommendations, tools and guidelines to be included in the Guide2 Autonomy for how to design CAVs and CAV user experience in a way that better answers to their specific needs.

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PAsCAL title