Motorists are sceptical that driverless cars will be commonplace in 20 years’ time and many would rather see government funding go on road infrastructure rather than autonomous vehicle technology.

Only 5% of motorists think the Government should be prioritising financial support for the development of driverless vehicle tech.

Although the Government has allocated £69m to developing connected and autonomous vehicles, research by the RAC finds that only 5% of motorists think the Government should be prioritising financial support for the development of driverless vehicle technology in the current economic climate. A further 17% support investment in this area but don’t see it as an immediate priority.

Instead four in 10 (39%) would prefer to see the funds redirected to improving the existing road infrastructure while a similar number (40%) believe the chances of there being one million driverless vehicles on the UK’s roads by 2037 to be ‘a bit pie in the sky’ and that it will actually take far longer for that number of driverless cars to appear on the UK’s roads. Only one in 10 (12%), however, are optimistic that it will happen.

Drivers showed more enthusiasm towards the driver assistance technologies that are available today. Nearly half (45%) of respondents said they were attracted by adaptive cruise control while more than a third (36%) liked self-parking systems and 34% were attracted by automatic emergency braking.