AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE OPERATION BASED ON PASSENGER-COUNT

A system (10) for operating an autonomous vehicle includes a passenger-detector (18) and a controller-circuit (32). The passenger-detector (18) is operable to determine a passenger-count (20) of passengers (22) present in a host-vehicle (12). The controller-circuit (32) is in communication with the passenger-detector (18) and vehicle-controls (26) of the host-vehicle (12). The controller-circuit (32) is configured to operate the host-vehicle (12) in an autonomous-mode (14) and in accordance with a parameter (40). The parameter (40) is set to an empty-value (46) when passenger-count (20) is equal to zero, and the parameter (40) is set to an occupied-value (48) different from the empty-value (46) when the passenger (22) count is greater than zero.