In this study, we invited 1000 individuals to participate as respondents using convenience sampling, a non-probability sampling often associated with this type of study. The authors of this survey, who met the eligibility criteria, were excluded as potential participants.

The survey was accessible to the respondent who received an email invitation. We contacted individuals with email addresses who might contribute to our survey. Participants and colleagues were encouraged to recommend additional potential survey participants. The survey was not promoted online.

The survey was administered by inviting respondents to fill out an online survey investigating their opinions about transportation and ADAS technology. A link to the Google Form survey was included in the invitation emails. Invitations were sent out for a duration of one month, starting 20th March 2020. Respondents were encouraged to provide feedback in a single session to avoid distractions. After three days, respondents who had not responded were sent a reminder email. A second reminder was sent if no response was received within seven days. If no response was received, the respondent was deemed disinterested. Responses could be modified before submission but respondents could not re-enter the form using the same email address after it was submitted. There were no incentives offered to respondents for completing the survey.

The survey instrument was adapted from 6 to tap factors affecting acceptance of ADAS technology. The survey instrument was designed to assess the acceptance rate of Malaysian licensed drivers towards ADAS technology.

The participants had to answer 20 closed-ended or rating-scale questions. The questions were divided into three sections: Section A, Section B, and Section C. First, respondents answered demographic and driving-related questions. Next, respondents were asked about their views of the advantages and challenges of utilising ADAS technology. Finally, respondents were queried on vehicle decision-making and technology use. To prevent distractions and higher turnover, they were also encouraged to keep survey sessions to 20 minutes or less. Respondents who rated three or higher for rating-based questions were classified as “ADAS accepters.”

This case study was not intended to make statistical inferences concerning the wider population. Respondents who were Malaysian licensed drivers had higher merit than others. The underlying data from this study is accessible from Abdul Razak et al., ⁷ . We used descriptive statistics to analyse the ratings given by the respondents on each item. Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Excel, RRID: SCR_016137) was used for this purpose.

The Technology Transfer Office of the Multimedia University ethically approved this research. (Approval Number: EA0562021). In the invitation email, the survey participants were informed that (i) any information given was voluntary; (ii) the researchers were not accountable or responsible for any loss arising from the use of the information provided; (iii) the survey was expected to take 20 minutes; (iv) any identifying information acquired in connection with this survey would remain confidential; and (v) the findings may be submitted for publication, and the anonymised dataset would be made publicly available in a data repository. The original dataset was password-protected in a Google Drive folder.

Reporting Qualitative Research (SPQR) ⁸ were adhered to to report the survey outcomes.

We found that 10% of respondents had not driven since receiving their driving licence. Hence their driving behaviour was not analysed. Of those who drove, 50% resided in urban areas, 54.44% of respondents reported travelling less than 400 km daily for different reasons, while 44% claimed involvement in accidents previously ( Table 2). However, of those involved in accidents, 58.49% were only involved in minor accidents.

The impact of the accident was further investigated. We asked if the accident caused major or minor damage to the vehicle involved and if the driver or passenger required medical attention. It could also have been a combination of any of these three factors. The respondents stated that 23.62% experienced major damage, which cost them more than RM1000 to repair their vehicles, whereas 53.27% were involved in minor accidents. Around 9% of the respondents were involved in more than one accident, which resulted in experiencing more than one of the factors mentioned earlier.

Respondents were categorised as non-accepters, fence-sitters, and accepters based on their responses to a willingness to have in-vehicle systems providing driving assistance. Almost 82% of respondents were receptive to the technology (accepters), while 16.99% of respondents were non-receptive. Only 1.03% were fence-sitters. The accepters were younger drivers who were more receptive to new technology (see Table 3). Nevertheless, older drivers who had been involved in accidents previously were also receptive to the technology. Non-accepters required more information on the benefits of the technology and had a wait-and-see attitude before accepting the technology.

Respondents were further requested to rate safety applications, which they perceived as crucial for their driving experience in terms of convenience, economy, and safety. This included self-driving systems, lane changing, automated braking, and collision avoidance, signal timing, or blind spot occupancy, as well as real-time information related to routes, congestion, and incidents as part of their driving experience. Figure 1 illustrates the importance, rated as extremely important, very important, moderately important, slightly important, and not important.

Of the respondents, 82.7% favoured having Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, which can assist driving. Nevertheless, 48.9% of the respondents would like to wait until the technology has been thoroughly tested and checked before using Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. They would also be more confident about embracing the technology if they could see their associates, i.e., people they know using it. A total of 18.9% also tended to wait until the latest product excitement had subsided before the technology was purchased and used. However, almost a quarter (24.3%) of the respondents preferred to be the first to buy and try the new technology. About 7.8% of the respondents were not sure of their purchasing decision behaviour. This may be attributed to influence from family members, where 68.7% of the respondents indicated that family members influence their vehicle purchasing decision. However, 76.8% of the respondents would be willing to use the technology if it was pre-installed by the vehicle manufacturers. The remaining respondents would either ignore, disable, or remove the technology from the vehicle. About half of the respondents were willing to add Advanced Driver Assistance Systems to their vehicles if the cost was less than RM400.

The respondents’ concerns and perceived benefits relating to the implementation of ADAS technology in personal vehicles can be categorised into three groups: driver behaviour, security or safety, technology implementation.

Driver behaviour relates to how the respondents react as drivers and how other drivers react. Of the respondents, 55% feared that over-reliance on technology or other diversions might make drivers less attentive. Drivers frequently depend on technology too much and don’t practice safe driving (e.g., maintain a safe distance from other vehicles). A total of 30% of respondents were worried about vehicle data security breaches allowing illegal activities and affecting their driving habits. Moreover, the electromagnetic activity of communication devices, such as those in the system, may endanger drivers’ health. Nevertheless, 15% of respondents were eager to adopt ADAS technology for a safer driving experience.

Zenodo: Underlying data for ‘Driver perceptions on Advanced Driver Assistance Systems: A case study’, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5547222 ⁷

This project contains the following underlying data:

Data are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC-BY 4.0).