Dr Michelle Dickinson: Nanogirl on how self-driving cars might need a gender setting

This week we are talking self-driving cars and how they might need a gender setting on them! 

Anyone who has bought a new car will notice more and more technology and automated functions in them, helping the human driver to drive more safely.  Everything from keeping you in your lane if your drift, emergency braking for you if in danger and even self parking for you! 

All of these advances are part of a move to cars becoming fully autonomous, so us humans can sit back and relax while the car does the driving for us. 

No computer is perfect, and one of the interim features of self-driving cars will be when they sense a danger in which the human driver will need to take over to keep the vehicle and it's occupants safe. 

Now new research finds that these features might need a gender setting, with a study showing that women took over control of a self-driving car much more safely than men did! 

The study published in the journal Scientific Reports had 33 female and 43 male drivers to get behind the wheel of a car simulator which recreated the controls and feel of an autonomous vehicle. 

They then had the drivers be totally disengaged from the driving by reading out loud from an iPad while the simulator was driving. 

The simulator would then notify the distracted driver that there was a parked car blocking the road ahead and requested that the human take over the driving while the car continued at it's current speed.c 

The experiment gave the volunteers 20 seconds to spot the parked car, manoeuver around the vehicle by changing lanes and avoid a crash. 

The experiment took place in simulated lear, rainy, snowy and foggy conditions. 

The results showed that females were much better at taking back control of the vehicle when required to respond to a hazard.  The women in the test exhibited faster reaction times, were less hasty, and had better steering wheel control. 

Female participants were also found to veer the steering wheel less sharply after taking over control of the vehicle, maintaining better stability and exhibiting a a smaller percentage of hasty takeovers. 

The researchers concluded that car manufacturers might want to compensate for these gender based differences by having gender settings that can be programmed to the driver which may increase or decrease the amount of warning that a car gives in advance about safety hazards. 

With so many jokes that men are better drivers than men, this new research not only questions that but also raises the issues around how technology for all might not be the solution and instead we might need technology to be catered to the individual. 

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