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As perhaps the primary conduit of the physical expression of human freedom of movement, transportation in its various forms plays a critical role in human society. The availability of ready transport has shaped the fabric, infrastructure, and, to some degree, even the culture of whole human society. Now, automated driving, in various forms of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and self-driving systems, is promising a safe, efficient, and productive life to humans by relieving driver from active driving tasks in the context of road transportation. However, recent high-profile crashes, e.g., fatalities involving Uber test autonomous vehicle or Tesla car, have undermined the automated-driving promise of enhanced safety. On the other hand, in automotive industry, there are safety approaches like ISO 26262 and others in-development which all are expected to mitigate the safety risk resulting from automated driving.

The increasing automation of driving functionalities is one of the most important trends in the automotive industry. The trend is moving towards systems which allow the driver to be absent from the active driving task. During the process, on one hand, the human driver more and more relies upon the driving automation to perform the dynamic driving tasks. Therefore, the driver needs to trust the driving automation. On the other hand, even the high driving automation (e.g. SAE Level 4) can only performs its functionality within the specific operational design domain and the driving automation relies upon the human driver to handle events when the vehicle operates outside the domain. What’s more, for the lower level driving automation, the driver still needs to assume some fallback responsibility, and may be required to react promptly when the driving automation even inside the operational design domain is inadequate to operate the vehicle.