Would you want a ride to the hospital in a self-driving ambulance? If you caught yourself hesitating, you're not alone. Researchers from the Florida Institute of Technology and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University recently found that many people are less willing to be transported in a driverless ambulance than a regular one - significantly less willing, as it turns out.
"So we conducted three separate studies," says Stephen Rice, an associate professor of human factors at Embry-Riddle and one of the study's authors. "We found that about ... half of 1,000 US adults are significantly less willing to ride in the driverless ambulance, even when they would receive care from two paramedics instead of one."
"And quite a few of them are very negative about that and would absolutely refuse."