  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.
