Advanced driver assistance features can only make driving safer if drivers trust them enough to use them, according to a new study.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) research also reveals that trust appears likely to wane as vehicles move into the secondhand market.
The IIHS commissioned survey questioned more than 750 drivers who owned 2016-19 models equipped with advanced driver assistance features as standard equipment. The respondents included 402 owners who bought their vehicles new and another 362 who bought their vehicles used.
“Used car buyers were substantially less likely than new car buyers to know about the advanced driver assistance features present on their vehicles,” said IIHS Senior Research Scientist Ian Reagan, the author of the study.
“They were also less likely to be able to describe how those features work, and they had less trust in them. That could translate into less frequent use, causing crash reductions from these systems to wane.”
The survey also found that whether buyers bought their vehicle new or used, the more buyers knew about the features, the more they trusted them.
