Barriers to the Adoption of Autonomous Vehicles in Rural Communities

Rural communities are more dependent on transportation than their urban peers. Transportation within rural areas is necessary to access food, healthcare, educational opportunities, and employment, especially since rural residents have longer distances to travel to access them. Therefore, the availability of efficient and affordable transportation can lead to economic growth in rural areas and ensure that people can obtain the services they need. Autonomous Vehicles (AV) can improve accessibility and mobility in these communities. However, research that discusses autonomous vehicles' impact mostly focuses on urban transportation with limited focus on rural areas. In this paper, the barriers to adopting autonomous vehicles in rural areas are discussed by examining the current struggles of rural communities concerning finance, transportation infrastructure, policy, and demographics. First, we suggest that companies that design and create autonomous vehicles investigate efficient ways to ensure they are affordable to rural communities. Additionally, when using AVs for ridesharing, it must be ensured that rural communities have the financial means to use them. Second, companies must be attentive to these vehicles' accessibility to ensure that all individuals, including disabled and older adults, can use them without difficulty in rural communities. To maximize these vehicles' accessibility, they need to embrace the community in the design and policy-making processes. Lastly, any technologies used in these vehicles, such as facial recognition systems, need to address the potential of bias against minorities in rural communities to avoid the future disparate impacts and injustice toward particular groups of people in the society.