About
Dr. McDonald is an Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University and the Director of the Human Factors and Machine Learning Laboratory. His research focuses on modeling and predicting driver responses to automated vehicles, understanding the influence of social media on potential automated vehicle users, and driver trust in automated vehicle technology.
PAVE: How does your work align with the mission of PAVE to educate the public on AV technology and its promise?
The outcomes of my work can be used to how best to communicate the capabilities and limits of AV technology to the public.
PAVE: What challenges do you see in improving public education about automated vehicles? How can we best address those challenges?
The biggest challenges I see today are the wide variety of terms used to describe AVs, and the disconnect between those terms and actual vehicle capabilities. I believe addressing these challenges requires systems solutions that consider stakeholders from the public, government, industry, and academia.
