Over the past months, concrete results have derived from the EC-co-funded research project PAsCAL, focusing on Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs)!
You can now download the report of the second survey on the acceptance of CAVs. 1030 blind or partially sighted persons contributed out of a total of 5659, which is a fantastic outcome! In particular, 8 EBU national members collected more than 800 responses directly, a massive involvement which exceeded by far the consortium’s expectations and was duly acknowledged.
The survey’s main conclusions addressing visual impairment are the following:
Visually impaired (VI) people have a higher intention to use a CAV than sighted people, except for the younger generation (aged from 18 to 29).
VI respondents considered CAVs would have an added value in terms of safety, sustainability, independence, efficiency, affordability and ease of use. When it comes to privacy, no improvement is expected.
Expectations from VI persons in relation to CAVs are positive. They are even more positive in comparison with sighted respondents.
You can also access for free an online comparative tool created by the Mannheim university to extract statistics per country, age, education level, employment status, etc., and, importantly, visual impairment. Like any mine, you have to go deep to extract your own gold. Its use is complex and poses accessibility challenges.
Yet, the university will present it during an info session on Monday 25 April at 14.00 CET so that you can use it for our own communication or advocacy purposes. This short session will only be intended for EBU and its member organisations. Any interested person shall register by email at ebuprojects@euroblind.org. The session link will be circulated shortly before the session.
PAsCAL partners’ work is not over. Based on the many activities implemented, including focus groups and tests with Italian and German blind and partially sighted persons, the consortium is currently feeding the future Guide2Autonomy (G2A), a set of 100 recommendations that will allow an improved understanding of CAVs. A few of them will focus on visual impairment. The G2A shall be launched during autumn 2022, just before the project ends.
For more information on the project, please visit the PAsCAL website, follow its progress on social media (Facebook - Twitter - LinkedIn) or contact Romain FERRETTI, EBU Project Manager.