Mobility and healthy ageing in the city: Exploring opportunities and challenges of autonomous vehicles for older adults' outdoor mobility

Highlights

• Explores older adults’ perceptions of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) for outdoor mobility

• They percieve opportunities for physical activity, social interaction, and stress-free door-to-door on-demand mobility

• Public transport and shared autonomous vehicle services are the most preferred for their outdoor mobility needs

• Safety, financial and usability concerns must be addressed if the technology would benefit older adults

Abstract

Older adults face outdoor mobility challenges due to age-related changes and problems linked to the transportation system. The advent of fully-autonomous vehicles (AVs) is expected to benefit older adults by facilitating their outdoor mobility. However, research exploring the implications of AVs from older adults' perspective is limited. This study explores older adults' perception of the opportunities and concerns regarding AVs, in relation to their outdoor mobility needs and challenges. Using a qualitative design, we explore these issues based on in-depth interviews conducted with participants (≥65 years) in Greater Manchester, UK. The results revealed that older adults perceive opportunities in AVs enhancing their physical activity, promoting social interaction and offering stress-free door-to-door mobility. They, however, expressed concerns including safety, cost, possible erosion of road etiquettes and a desirable driving culture as a result of automation, a lack of social interaction with a human driver, and possible difficulties in using AVs. The participants' most preferred use options (i.e., public transport and shared autonomous services) are grounded in their need for social interaction, physical activity, safe and less stressful, and affordable travel. The implications of these findings for policy at the intersection of mobility and healthy ageing in future cities are discussed.

Introduction

Ageing constitutes one of the main impacts of on-going global demographic change. It is estimated that by 2050, there will be about two billion people aged 60 years and over, representing 22% of the global population (WHO, 2007). This proportion will be far higher in developed countries, such as the UK, where over 20% of the population is already 60 years or older, and this demographic is expected to make-up about one-third of the population by 2050 (I. Shergold & Parkhurst, 2012).

As people age, they encounter a number of challenges in relation to their outdoor mobility. The functional, sensory and cognitive changes associated with ageing means that peoples' outdoor mobility often becomes restricted in later life: Older adults may be unable to drive (Anstey et al., 2005) and become more prone to accidents (Bayam et al., 2005; Meuleners et al., 2006). Age-related changes also decrease older adults' capability to cope with environmental constraints to walking and cycling (Black & Street, 2014; Li, 2012; Zandieh et al., 2016), thereby shrinking their spatial area of mobility even within their residential neighbourhoods (Glass & Balfour, 2003). Moreover, previous research has shown a strong association between lack of access to adequate mobility and lack of access to opportunities, and social exclusion in later life (Kenyon et al., 2002; Mackett & Thoreau, 2015; I. Shergold & Parkhurst, 2012).

In order to meet the changing needs of the ageing population, a number of changes to both the built-environment and specialised services are needed (Steels, 2015; Zandieh et al., 2016). Indeed, in recent years, creating age-friendly cities and communities has become a prominent issue in urban planning, public health and social policy (Buffel et al., 2012). Among the priority areas on the age-friendly cities agenda is how to encourage active ageing, reduce social exclusion and enhance quality of life as people age (WHO, 2007). New technologies are increasingly assuming prominence in addressing the challenges associated with ageing. For example, indoor assistive technologies, such as sensor-based monitoring systems, are being used to support the elderly at home by increasing the ease and safety in performing various tasks and contributing to their independence and autonomy (McCreadie & Tinker, 2005; Tsertsidis, 2019; Woodcock et al., 2019). Technologies in the form of mobility aids are also being used to assist older adults to overcome environmental demands that act as barriers to their outdoor mobility (Löfqvist et al., 2016).

With advances in artificial intelligence and Information and Communication Technology (ICT), urban transportation systems are gradually being transformed (F. Cugurullo et al., 2020). From coventional vehicles with no automation (i.e. Level 0), these technologies are now enabling advanced levels of automation that allow a human driver to cede full control of safety-critical functions under certain traffic or environmental conditions (i.e. Level 3 automation) (NHTSA, 2013). Full self-driving vehicles (i.e. Level 4 automation) are being designed to perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire journey (NHTSA, 2013).

Fully-autonomous vehicles are expected to become part of the everyday, potentially providing mobility and accessibility benefits to different groups of people in society (F. Cugurullo & Acheampong, 2020; Milakis et al., 2017). With fully autonomous vehicles, age-related impairments, physical and sensory disabilities may no longer become barriers to motorized transport use. Consequently, it has been widely claimed that autonomous vehicles could help older adults overcome their outdoor mobility challenges (Curl et al., 2018; I. Shergold et al., 2016) and may provide more opportunities for older adults to more often travel outside their residential neighbourhoods. Realising the potential mobility and accessibility benefits of this new transport technology will depend on a number of factors of which the attitudes and perceived opportunities and challenges of older people are crucial. Despite being critical, empirical research addressing these issues from older adults' perspectives is limited (see e.g. Faber & van Lierop, 2020; Harper et al., 2016; Kovacs et al., 2020; Yang & Coughlin, 2014).

This paper, therefore, contributes to the evolving literature on the possible accessibility and mobility implications of autonomous vehicles, by focusing on older adults in Greater Manchester, UK. Adopting a qualitative design DES, it explores older adults' percieved outdoor mobility problems in the urban area. Within the context of their outdoor mobility challenges, the study explores older adults' perception of the mobility opportunities that autonomous vehicles could offer, and their concerns of using the technology. It also explores their preferred modes of use of autonomous vehicles (i.e autonomous private vehicles, autonomous public transport and shared autonomous vehicle services). Based on the findings, a number of implications are drawn for urban policy and planning at the intersection of mobility and healthy ageing in future cities.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Following this introduction section, an overview of the literature is presented in Section 2. Section 3 and Section 4 focus on the research methods and results, respectively. A discussion of the results and their implications for urban planning and policy is presented in Section 5, followed by our final reflections on the contributions of the currents paper as well as the limitations and directions for further research in Section 6.