The development of Autonomous Vehicle (AV) has created a novel job, the safety driver, recruited from experienced drivers to supervise and operate AV in numerous driving missions. Safety drivers usually work with non-perfect AV in high-risk real-world traffic environments for road testing tasks. However, this group of workers is under-explored in the HCI community. To fill this gap, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 safety drivers. Our results present how safety drivers cope with defective algorithms and shape and calibrate their perceptions while working with AV. We found that, as front-line workers, safety drivers are forced to take risks accumulated from the AV industry upstream and are also confronting restricted self-development in working for AV development. We contribute the first empirical evidence of the lived experience of safety drivers, the first passengers in the development of AV, and also the grassroots workers for AV, which can shed light on future human-AI interaction research.

翻译：自动驾驶汽车（AV）的发展催生了一种新型职业——安全驾驶员，这类人员从经验丰富的驾驶员中招募，负责在众多驾驶任务中监督和操作AV。安全驾驶员通常与非完美的AV在真实高风险交通环境中协同执行道路测试任务。然而，人机交互（HCI）学界对这一工人群体的研究尚不充分。为填补这一空白，我们对26名安全驾驶员进行了半结构化访谈。研究结果揭示了安全驾驶员如何应对有缺陷的算法，并在与AV协同工作时塑造和校准自身认知。我们发现，作为一线工作者，安全驾驶员被迫承担AV行业上游累积的风险，同时在为AV发展而工作中面临自我发展的限制。我们首次提供了安全驾驶员（既是AV发展中的首批乘客，也是AV领域的基层工作者）工作体验的实证证据，这可为未来人机交互研究提供启示。