SOMEWHERE IN NORTHERN Virginia, a man dressed as a car seat seeks the answers to vital questions about how autonomous vehicles interact with the public.

The fellow, who had nothing to say when confronted by a local NBC reporter on Tuesday, spends his days driving a silver Ford Transit Connect van around Arlington County. It requires a little skill to do this without moving one’s arms, but this goofy endeavor is done in the name of science, and builds on work done in recent years by similarly costumed researchers at Stanford University.
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Car Seat Man is part of a Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study into human-vehicle interactions—information automakers and tech companies like Google will find invaluable as they loose thousands of self-driving cars onto the country’s roads. The Institute confirmed that the guy inside that definitely-not-store-bought car seat costume and his shiny new van are part of its research effort. It didn’t have much to say beyond that, but the Institute notes on its website that it hopes to observe how humans react to robocars, and determine whether the folks making such vehicles should consider design tweaks to ease any tension or avoid any confusion.
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