With self-driving cars gaining traction in today’s automobile landscape, the issue of legal liability in the case of an accident has become more relevant.
Research in human-vehicle interaction has shown time and again that even systems designed to automate driving — like adaptive cruise control, which maintains the vehicle at a certain speed and distance from the car ahead — are far from being error-proof.
Recent evidence points to drivers’ limited understanding of what these systems can and cannot do (also known as mental models) as a contributing factor to system misuse.