TrustFSDV: Framework for Building and Maintaining Trust in Self-Driving Vehicles

The deployment of fully self-sufficient, self-driving vehicles (SDVs) to city roads in a diverse range of benefit-driven concepts is on the horizon where the higher levels of automation with automated driving systems (ADSs) are being installed on vehicles. The acceptance of SDVs as safety-critical systems to successfully substitute for human drivers requires a high level of trustworthiness in numerous socio-technical aspects. By the time SDVs are available to the general public with challenges and opportunities, the trustworthiness of SDVs in rapidly changing, partially observable, multiagent, stochastic, sequential, dynamic, continuous and unknown environments shall be ensured from the perspective of the stakeholders. This paper analyses the dynamics of trust in SDVs from the perspectives of all stakeholders to result in how the “trustworthiness” of SDVs can be ensured with mitigated risks and dangers (i.e., non-maleficence) and maximised benefits (i.e., beneficence) as a holistic view of all the dimensions and dynamics of SDVs. Besides, a framework, namely, TrustFSDV, that designates a transitional roadmap with delegated responsibilities and liabilities along with the desired performance indicators, is proposed for the stakeholders to pursue in ensuring a sufficient level of trust within the concepts of human-vehicle integration and society-vehicle harmonisation — inducing the advancement of SDVs and acceptance of them by the society — while the future is being revolutionised by SDVs. To conclude the key findings in this research, i) although instant trust can be gained through hard work, it can be lost readily without forward-thinking during the life-cycle of SDVs, ii) a high level of trustworthiness cannot only be achieved by manufacturers, it requires the strict collaboration of all the stakeholders with distributed responsibilities and liabilities while moulding the requirements of the stakeholders in a system under the supervision of related disciplines, iii) the manufacturers along with the press shall not ignore the real technical limitations of the SDV technology when communicating about benefits to the potential customers, and iv) drastic steps are needed to be taken concerning ethical and legal perspectives, which is perceived as the primary concern beyond technology to build and maintain a high level of trustworthiness.