Americans' resistance to driverless cars is about jobs and inequality, not just safety

Accepted for publication in Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice. University of California San Diego.

The public conversation about self-driving cars has centered, for years, on a single question: are they safe? Will the software brake fast enough? Will the sensors see the cyclist? The fear of a crash dominates headlines, regulatory debates, and consumer surveys alike.

But a new national study from the University of California San Diego suggests that Americans' unease runs deeper than the fear of a collision. When researchers analyzed responses from 4,631 U.S. adults in the Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel, they found a web of economic anxieties that may be just as important in determining whether driverless cars gain public acceptance.

The numbers behind the skepticism

The survey results are stark. More than 62% of respondents said they would probably or definitely not want to ride in a driverless vehicle. About 85% expected widespread autonomous vehicle adoption to cause job losses among ride-hailing, ridesharing, and delivery drivers. And more than 46% believed driverless cars would widen the gap between higher- and lower-income Americans, compared with roughly 6% who thought the technology would narrow it.

"Driverless cars are often framed as an engineering challenge, but it's also a profound sociotechnical transition," said Behram Wali, the study's lead author and an assistant professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at UC San Diego. "This study develops a new behavioral framework to reveal a critical tension: how Americans' willingness to embrace driverless cars is directly tied to their fears of job loss and income inequality."

A split that tracks with class and geography

The survey exposed a notable divide. Respondents who were more tech-aware, had higher education levels, and earned higher incomes were more willing to ride in autonomous vehicles. But here is the paradox: these same pro-technology groups were also more likely to acknowledge that driverless cars could worsen income inequality and eliminate jobs. They saw the risks clearly and still expressed interest in adoption.

On the other side, lower-income respondents and those living in rural and non-metropolitan areas were both less willing to use the technology and more alarmed about its economic consequences. For these groups, driverless cars are not an exciting innovation but a potential threat to livelihoods that already feel precarious.

The pattern mirrors broader reactions to artificial intelligence. Driverless cars represent one of AI's most visible real-world applications, requiring machine learning to interpret chaotic physical environments and translate split-second decisions into the movements of a multi-ton vehicle. The trust question, it turns out, is not limited to whether the algorithm can drive. It extends to who benefits and who pays the price.

Why awareness campaigns are not enough

The conventional wisdom in the autonomous vehicle industry has been that reluctance will fade as people become more familiar with the technology. Expose enough people to self-driving rides, the thinking goes, and comfort will follow. Wali's findings challenge that assumption.

"While conventional strategies such as increasing awareness and tech-savviness are helpful and necessary to boost AV acceptance, this study shows that such strategies alone cannot address the fundamental employment and economic concerns," Wali said.

The study argues for a "sociotechnical" approach that pairs technology deployment with policy interventions: workforce reskilling and upskilling programs, expanded social safety nets, and efforts to ensure equitable access across geographic and socioeconomic lines. Without such measures, Wali warns, public resistance could delay or distort the rollout of autonomous vehicles in ways that deepen existing inequalities.

Data from 2021 in a faster-moving world

One important caveat: the Pew survey data was collected in November 2021. Since then, autonomous vehicle deployment has accelerated significantly, with companies like Waymo expanding commercial robotaxi service to multiple U.S. cities. Public attitudes may have shifted in either direction as more people encounter driverless vehicles in daily life. The economic concerns, however, have likely only intensified as the technology has moved from pilot programs to commercial scale.

The study was accepted for publication in Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice. It used data from the Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel, a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults.

"We cannot afford a laissez-faire approach to AV regulation," Wali said. "Policymakers must ensure that underrepresented groups are not left behind."

The question is no longer whether driverless cars will be deployed. It is whether anyone is building the policy infrastructure to make sure the transition does not leave millions of workers behind.