Tip of the Week

BestRide.com is working with Car Talk, MIT and the New England Motor Press Association to extend the research done in understanding how comfortable American drivers are with autonomous technology.

The MIT AgeLab is again presenting a survey that asks pointed questions about your experience, interest and knowledge of autonomous technologies. To entice you a bit, if you take it before April 27, you’ll be entered into a drawing for one of 10 $50 Amazon Gift Cards.

The last survey results were the basis for a white paper produced by MIT’s AgeLab last year. The AgeLab will use this year’s data to understand how opinions are changing as this technology becomes more widespread.

“As the framework for mobility in the United States begins to shift from one of personally-owned, manually-driven vehicles to one of a shared and perhaps partially automated fleet, established driver perceptions about their trust and comfort in various vehicle technologies is critical to our understanding as to how one needs to facilitate behavior change,” says Bryan Reimer, Ph.D., a Research Scientist in the MIT AgeLab and the Associate Director of The New England University Transportation Center at MIT.

The survey not only delves into our comfort level with the technology, but our level of trust in the suppliers of that technology. “It is clear that the powerhouses of Silicon Valley may be key players in the future of the automotive industry,” says Reimer. “The degree to which we will trust these technology companies to produce automated vehicles over traditional legacy manufactures is not clear.”

What will the self-driving vehicles of the future look like?

What materials will vehicles be made of?

How will autonomous technology begin to influence the design of our automobiles?

These are the questions that panelists will be answering, and the information provided in the survey will set the stage for the discussion.

The survey is posted at Qualtrics, the world’s leading research and insights platform, and should take 10 minutes to complete. The survey asks a few questions about your current car, and a series of questions that gauge your experience and comfort with the technology. Your zip code is required to gauge any regional trends, but it’s completely anonymous and asks for no personal information.

“The myth about automation is that as the level of human responsibility decreases so do the need for education,” says Reimer. “Given that we are rapidly increasing the level of automated vehicle technology it is an open question as to where people are going to learn how to appropriately use it.”


— Craig Fitzgerald/BestRide.com


The List
A new study by used-car listing site iSeeCars.com found the following cars are more likely to last 200,000 miles or more:

Rank Model
1 Toyota Avalon
1 Honda Odyssey
3 Honda Accord
4 Ford Taurus
5 Toyota Sienna
6 Toyota Camry
6 Chevrolet Impala
8 Toyota Prius
9 Nissan Maxima
10 Chrysler Pacifica

Did you know

A new study, published recently in the journal BMC Medicine, found that some people may be drowsy drivers but not even know it which makes them more dangerous on the road.
The study’s lead researcher Dr. Daniel Gottlieb said that not getting enough sleep affects a person’s thinking and reaction time while increasing the risk for crashes. His team found that people who only get six hours of rest a night have a 33 percent higher risk of a crash than if they slept eight hours every night. Unfortunately, people who suffer from chronic sleep problems often don’t think they are drowsy. The study authors noted that lack of proper sleep is so common that about 25 to 30 percent of U.S. adults only get six or fewer hours a night.

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