Seating preferences in highly automated vehicles and occupant safety awareness: A national survey of Chinese perceptions

Abstract

Objective: The potential challenge for providing occupant protection accompanying seating preferences is an essential safety prerequisite for highly automated vehicle (HAV) popularization. This research is aimed toward identifying Asia-specific individualized seating preferences in HAVs and occupant safety awareness via a national survey in China.Methods: An online questionnaire survey was performed to investigate seating preferences (i.e., sitting posture, seating orientation, and position) and occupant safety awareness (i.e., seat belt usage and receptiveness to extended or additional restraints beyond the conventional three-point seat belt). We assessed whether perceptions were modulated by individual characteristics via bivariate and correlation analyses. The possibility of wearing seat belts was estimated by binary logistic regression.Results: The final survey data set includes 1,018 respondents after a rigorous validity check (response rate: 59.2%). The results show that preferred sitting postures and seating orientation were significantly associated with sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., gender, age, city tier) (p < 0.05). The rear seat was preferred in both the conventional (65.6%) and “face-to-face mode” seating configurations (77.6%), largely due to the fact that customers subjectively viewed it as being safer than sitting in a front seat in case of collisions. Despite the current trend of an increasing usage rate of seat belts, 48.5% of respondents preferred to be unrestrained in rear seats, especially for the subgroups who were from less developed cities and with a higher usage rate of public transport (p < 0.01). Low receptiveness to extended restraint and high comfort requirements were confirmed for the young, high-frequency road users, and for those who were from developed areas (p < 0.05).Conclusions: Diversified and specific seating preferences of Chinese occupants were identified facing emerging use of HAVs. Next generation occupant protection systems shall be adapted to account for the individualized expectations and needs on seating designs from certain population groups. Balanced restraint design between safety and comfort was required to exceed the existing strong dependence on exogenous causes of restraint use (e.g., legal restrictions) in Asia.