Etiquette Equality or Inequality? Drivers’ Intention to be Polite to Automated Vehicles in Mixed Traffic

HumanHumans drivers and automated vehicles (AVs) might share public roadsRoads in mixed traffic in the near future. We focused on a specific question: Will humanHumans drivers interact with AVs in the same ways that they interact with other humanHumans drivers or traditional vehicles (TVs)? Theories and evidenceEvidence in the literature on AVs and humanHumans-computer interaction (HCI) imply two opposing hypothesesHypotheses: etiquette equality and etiquette inequality. To examine them, we investigated drivers’ intentionIntentions to be polite or impoliteImpolite to AVs in mixed traffic and TVs. Data from two vignette-based experiments (total N = 825) supported the etiquette equality hypothesisHypotheses: driver participants expressed similar intentionsIntentions to demonstrate polite driving behaviors in Experiment 1 and impoliteImpolite driving behaviors in Experiment 2 when they were assumed to interact with AVs and TVs. This finding seems to echo the “Computers-Are-Social-Actors” paradigm in HCI, which suggests that people will interact with computers in much the same ways that they interact with other people. Theoretical and practical implications of our results are discussed.