Penetration of ITS concepts at the university level and willingness to their introduction

It is a common belief among researchers of the intelligent transportation systems (ITS) community that ITS applications are the key to make transportation systems safer, more comfortable, and more efficient, while reducing the environmental impact. However, there seems to be a gap between ITS community and final users. It cannot be assumed that the advantages of ITS are clear to the users, and we must bear in mind that their reluctance to use some applications and services may be a serious problem to gain the maximum benefit from the ITS research. Of special significance are those systems which reduce the role of the driver in favor of automated control systems. This paper focuses on that gap, and presents the results obtained from a survey made to find out the attitude of young Spanish undergraduate students towards ITS. Special attention is payed to information and communication technologies (ICT) students, since they are expected to be a part of the ITS community in a short future. Age, gender and college degree are taken into account when analyzing the results. As an example of our study, it was found that polled Spanish undergraduates seem to be more concerned about the environment than about road safety. Furthermore, the difference of concern is even larger among students of ICT degrees. The paper concludes with some clues to understand the answers given by students.