Exploring the Potential of Using Privately-Owned, Self-Driving Autonomous Vehicles for Evacuation Assistance

The potential use of privately-owned autonomous vehicles (AVs) for the evacuation of carless households threatened by hurricanes is underexplored. Based on 518 original survey responses from South Carolina (SC) residents, an ordered logistic model was developed to determine the willingness of individuals to temporarily share their AVs for evacuation without their presence. The model results indicated that respondents who (a) were unemployed, (b) had experience giving disaster relief assistance, (c) took regular religious trips and were more comfortable with AVs (d) delivering packages and (e) being purchased and shared for income in the next five years were more willing to share for evacuation. Respondents who (a) were aged 65 or older, (b) had income below $15,000 per year, and (c) had less than two social media accounts were less willing to share. The model was applied to a state-wide synthetic population to simulate a disaster scenario in SC under different AV market penetration (p) scenarios to determine the potential use of AVs for evacuation assistance. Monte Carlo simulation results indicated that the percentage of households that can be evacuated increased linearly with respect to p, by 5.5% for every 1% increase in p until p was nearly 20%. When p was 30% or higher, the number of shared AVs was sufficient to evacuate all households in need. Therefore, in SC, if privately-owned AVs are widely available, they could serve as a viable alternative or be used to supplement the traditional evacuation programs that rely on buses.