With the prospect of driverless cars taking to the roads in the UK making headlines, we thought we weeks we asked our 22,000 followers on Facebook what they feel about this advance in technology.

The results were surprising, with most respondents having very strong opinions either in favour or against the prospect of driverless cars, and some feeling that there is not enough consideration being given to motorcyclists during the development of driverless technology.

 “As long as it is proven to detect bikes from all angles, then it’s a good thing.”

“So much will depend on how well driverless vehicles are pre-programmed to be aware of motorcycles and how they interact with other road traffic.”

Thoughts from two of our survey respondents

Interestingly, we found that older riders were more likely to feel more at risk on the roads and were less in favour of the presence of driverless cars when compared to younger riders. However, this correlation was small, suggesting that the vast majority of bikers are widely undecided about driverless cars.

The age group most in favour of driverless cars was 30-39 year-olds, 67% of whom would ride more often if all other road traffic was driverless.

“Filtering would be far safer.”

“I ride with caution all the time but I would be very wary of a driverless vehicle”

More thoughts from two other survey respondents

One of the clearest results that shows a divide in age, is how the bikers would feel if more vehicles became driverless and whether motorcyclists would become more of a risk to one another. All 18-20-year-olds believed that there wouldn’t be a change in the risk they are to each other, where as 46% of 60+ year-old bikers felt they were ‘probably’ at more of a risk to one another.

However, despite the ages disagreeing over whether they felt they were at more risk, the vast majority of bikers wouldn’t change how often they would ride.

There were also some interesting and contrasting comments made on driverless cars from the survey respondents. One 50-59 year old stated that they would “feel far more vulnerable” and would “need to be even more vigilant” if driverless cars were introduced to the road. Another biker stated how they would be “very nervous” about riding their Sports Tourer if they had to share the road with driverless cars.

However, not everyone had negative views, as one 30-39-year-old biker believed they “would feel more at ease” as driverless cars would rule out “unexpected or stupid” actions from drivers.

Other interesting comments from our survey:

“I just don’t like the idea…. what happens if one of these driverless cars computer crashes at 70mph on a motorway, duel carriage way… or decides to have a computer glitch out side a school ….”

“I might try to avoid driverless cars, as the motorcycle is a smaller object than a car, and might not be detected by the cars’ sensors. Also, a computer program may prioritise the condition of the car over the lives of other road users, and may decide to, for example, crash into a biker instead of a lamppost, as a lamppost is an immovable object that will completely destroy a car, whereas a bike isn’t.”

“Concerned about immature implementation.   Much like cellphones, the internet and other major tech advances, we as a society, switch things on THEN decide how to handle/implement it with our societal infrastructure”

“Planes don’t always get it right and they have had autopilot control for years and at huge cost what hope is there for driverless road vehicles?”

If you would like to keep up to date with Tru-Tension, or participate in any future surveys, make sure you’re following us on social media and sign-up to our e-mailing list.

For press enquires relating to this survey, please contact us.