New National Survey: Public Comfort with Autonomous Vehicles Is Rising

Americans are becoming more comfortable with autonomous vehicles, and the shift is happening quickly.

A new national survey of 8,000 American adults conducted by Stack Data Strategy finds that net comfort with using a self-driving vehicle for day-to-day travel improved by 12 points in a single quarter. In 35 Congressional districts across the country, more people report being comfortable with autonomous vehicles than those who are not comfortable. 

Nationwide, more than 36 percent of adults say they would feel comfortable using an AV for daily travel, up from 29 percent earlier this year. The direction is clear; the pace at which comfortability with autonomous vehicles is increasing is unusual for public attitudes on any technology, and the district-level results show where that change is furthest along.

The ten most comfortable districts in the country

1. NY-10 (Lower Manhattan) - Representative Dan Goldman (D): +18.3 net comfort with AVs
2. Washington, DC (at-large) - Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D): +17.3 net comfort with AVs
3. NY-12 (Manhattan East Side) - Representative Jerry Nadler (D): +15.4 net comfort with AVs
4. NY-07 (Brooklyn/Queens) - Representative Nydia Velázquez (D): +14.7 net comfort with AVs
5. TX-37 (Austin) - Representative Lloyd Doggett (D): +14.4 net comfort with AVs
6. CA-11 (San Francisco) - Representative Nancy Pelosi (D): +13.6 net comfort with AVs
7. CO-01 (Denver) - Representative Diana DeGette (D): +11.5 net comfort with AVs
8. VA-08 (Arlington/Alexandria) - Representative Don Beyer (D): +11.1 net comfort with AVs
9. MA-07 (Boston) - Representative Ayanna Pressley (D): +10.9 net comfort with AVs
10. WA-07 (Seattle) - Representative Pramila Jayapal (D): +9.6 net comfort with AVs

These ten districts span seven states plus the District of Columbia, reaching across the Northeast, Texas, the Mountain West, the Pacific Northwest, and California.

Where comfort is growing fastest

The survey also asked whether respondents had become more or less comfortable with riding in an AV compared with two years ago. The districts reporting the largest net movement toward comfort:

1. NY-12 (Manhattan East Side) - Representative Jerry Nadler (D): +29.0
2. CA-11 (San Francisco) - Representative Nancy Pelosi (D): +28.4
3. NY-10 (Lower Manhattan) - Representative Dan Goldman (D): +27.9
4. TX-37 (Austin) - Representative Lloyd Doggett (D): +27.9
5. CO-01 (Denver) - Representative Diana DeGette (D): +27.7
6. WA-07 (Seattle) - Representative Pramila Jayapal (D): +25.0

Every one of these six districts also ranks in the top ten for current comfort. The places most comfortable with AVs today are the same places that moved the furthest to get there.

Congressional district level results are produced using MRP-modelling. This technique models demographic and geographic patterns in public opinion from national-level polling and uses these models to estimate opinion within each district.

Comfort is growing ahead of deployment

The geographic pattern in this data is not random. Eight of the ten most comfortable districts in the country have hosted AV operations or testing.

For example, Austin and San Francisco have active and thriving commercial driverless service today. Waymo is launching in Denver this year. Zoox and Waymo have tested in Seattle. Waymo has previously tested in Manhattan and in Boston. In Washington, DC, companies like Waymo, Zoox, and Nuro have all tested vehicles.

Comfort is highest in the places where these vehicles are on the road, which is backed up by additional data from the 2023 JD Power U.S. Robotaxi Experience Study that found positive first-hand experiences tend to build consumer trust. “Among riders, 47% gained trust during a ride and 51% maintained their already high level of trust in the technology during a ride.”

What this means for public policy

It is clear that public comfort with autonomous vehicles is rising across the country and deployments are expanding. Policymakers must create a policy landscape that allows the safe and timely deployment of autonomous vehicles.

A federal AV framework would give companies a clear path to deploy safely and implement consistent rules that give the public confidence in the benefits self-driving vehicles bring to communities across the country, including safer roads, greater accessibility, and stronger supply chains. At the same time, state policymakers should enact state deployment laws that authorize AVs on the states’ roads. Currently, 26 U.S. states accounting for 58 percent of the U.S. population have AV laws and further progress is needed to bring the technology to all of the United States.