Hasta La Creative!

Waymo, the self-driving car division of Google-parent company Alphabet, is bolstering its education campaign, and its timing is pretty good: A new poll shows that a majority of Americans are still afraid to give up the wheel.

Waymo’s new 360-degree video released today puts viewers in the back seat of one of its self-piloted cars. The film, by its in-house Google Creative Lab, begins by explaining how Waymo’s cars use millions of laser beams per second, plus radar and high-resolution cameras to detect surroundings. Then viewers are put in the backseat of a car as it cruises along a house-lined divided highway. “The ride feels a lot like being driven in a regular car,” a female voiceover smoothly intones.

A Gallup poll recently released, however, shows that plenty of Americans are still freaked out by the concept. Fifty-four percent of the U.S. respondents say they’re unlikely to use self-driving cars, according to “Americans Hit the Brakes on Self-Driving Cars,” which was released last week. The findings came from a larger Northeastern University/Gallup survey of Americans’ attitudes on artificial intelligence. People ages 66 and older have the greatest resistance, not surprisingly, with 69 percent saying they’re unlikely to to use self-driving cars. Acceptance grows the younger the generation. People ages 18 to 35 are fairly split at 36 percent likely and 41 percent unlikely.

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