You Never Forget How to Drive: Driver Skilling and Deskilling in the Advent of Autonomous Vehicles

In the scope of autonomous driving, the question arises if the increased use of automated systems will have an impact on driver's skills in handling the car in the long term. In order to gain more insights on the issue of driver deskilling and how it relates to driving experience and time intervals of non-driving, we conducted an online survey (n=703) considering three driver groups. We found that initial skilling is more of an issue than deskilling after long periods of driving inactivity, i.e., while once learned driving skills seem to remain stable after longer periods of non-driving, they are much more influenced by driving experience in terms of annual mileage and frequency of use. Applied to the autonomous context, this means that drivers must be trained to a high enough skill level or require sufficient manual driving experience, in order to be able to react properly when driving themselves.