Driver-to-Driver Communication on the Highway: What Drivers Want

Drivers need to coordinate with each other to share the road infrastructure. The social relationship between drivers also influences the driving behavior. With everywhere available connectivity and the broad penetration of social network services, the relationship between drivers on the road may gain more transparency, enabling social information to pass through the steel shell of the cars and giving opportunities to reduce anonymity and strengthen empathy. In this paper, we investigate what sort of social communication drivers consider useful for a highway scenario and which factors influence their willingness to receive or send the information concerned. We utilized the CoConstructing Stories method to investigate 30 novel scenarios with 22 participants. We find that driver-to-driver communication relating to Safety and Efficiency is well accepted. In order to account for the acceptance of driver-to-driver communication concerning the Social relation between drivers and their Identity, additional information is required. Some relevant factors are considered in the discussion, and steps for future research are suggested.