Human Drivers' Awareness of Utility and Privacy Risks of Vehicle-to-Everything Communication: A Driving Simulator Study

With recent progress in vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication, increasing studies have been conducted to enhance its safety, security, and privacy from a technical perspective. However, few studies have been conducted to understand human drivers' acceptance of and concerns about V2X communication. In a driving simulator study (N=32) we examined the effect of experiencing enhanced driving safety through the V2X application on participants' awareness of utility and privacy risks of connectivity-based data exchange in fully autonomous driving. In the post-drive interviews, we found that participants revealed limited awareness of the effect of V2X communication on enhancing driving safety (utility) and its associated privacy risks. Nevertheless, an extra description of the exchanged data in the V2X communication helped participants increase their awareness. We also solicited ways to better inform human drivers of the utility and privacy risks of V2X communication. We discuss the implications of our findings and make recommendations for future V2X design.