Skip to main content

‘Only 20% of people’ would put their child inside an AV, says Fujitsu

Only 20% of people would be prepared to put their child inside an autonomous vehicle (AV), according to research from Fujitsu. People are more anxious about adopting digital services in travel than they are in other areas of their lives, according to Russell Goodenough, the company’s managing director of business and transport. Just 40% of people would put their trust in an AV - and the transport sector is falling behind in the race to digitisation, the company says. Speaking at a media forum in Lo
July 24, 2018 Read time: 3 mins
Only 20% of people would be prepared to put their child inside an autonomous vehicle (AV), according to research from 5163 Fujitsu.


People are more anxious about adopting digital services in travel than they are in other areas of their lives, according to Russell Goodenough, the company’s managing director of business and transport.

Just 40% of people would put their trust in an AV - and the transport sector is falling behind in the race to digitisation, the company says.

Speaking at a media forum in London, UK, Goodenough said there is a positive correlation between satisfaction of digital services and adoption rates within the financial services and retail sectors.

“The people working in our businesses aren’t immediately reaching to the same sorts of digital tools that people in other industries do,” he explained.

However, he believes the transport sector could learn from those industries and deliver digitisation less riskily – but he acknowledges there are challenges posed by rapidly-changing business models. “We are deeply exposed to disruption and new entrants coming into the market and taking existing revenue streams.”

The Fujitsu forum included speakers from 1466 Transport for London (TfL), Heathrow Airport and Hack Partners, who revealed how digital co-creation is helping them solve issues and shape journeys of the future.

Simon Reed, head of technology and data for surface transport at TfL, says the company is facing challenges through operating without government subsidies and dealing with passenger expectations to have real-time information.

“There’s a natural expectation that we are going to provide a more seamless service and that’s why we are looking at digital and co-operative ways of doing things.”

David Elliot, IT programme lead for airport operational systems at Heathrow airport, says the organisation does not move quickly and recognises the “sheer level” of collaboration necessary to turn data into information as a key challenge.

River Tamoor Baig, founder of Hack Partners, explains how the company’s hackathon events bring innovators outside of the transport sector to solve try and solve these problems. The team is presented with challenges and data sets and has 48 hours to come up with a solution to be presented to the industry.

Reed says TfL worked with insurance professionals and lawyers in a similar way to address issues surrounding where in London AVs could run and what this means for the insurance industry.

Tamoor Baig says a good first step is to open up data and make it more accessible.

“But a second step may be, your data being utilised by someone else in your ecosystem to add value back to your customers and their own customers,” he adds.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Ticketless travel for London’s commuters?
    April 4, 2013
    London's commuters will be able to use their mobile phones and bank cards for travel across the city, if Transport for London's (TfL) plans come to fruition. Thousands of London bus users already pay their fares using contactless bank cards instead of TfL Oyster cards, which have been widely used over the past decade. Users pay different charges for different London Underground zones and for train travel, so TfL has to decide on suitable payment mechanisms, and could drive the widespread adoption of systems
  • ITS Europe experts share mobility lab lessons
    June 4, 2019
    “Real problems” need to emerge in the development of an urban mobility lab before you can begin to find solutions, according to Raimo Tengvall, project manager of Forum Virium Helsinki. Speaking at this week’s ITS European Congress in Eindhoven, Netherlands, Tengvall shared lessons learned from the company’s Jätkäsaari urban mobility lab in the Finnish capital, Helsinki. “In the Jätkäsaari area we were having 80 million passengers going through a street network of a new residential area where there is a
  • Smarter transport remains key to smart cities
    January 9, 2018
    Colin Sowman looks at some of the challenges and solutions that will provide enhanced transport efficiency in tomorrow’s smarter cities. However you define a ‘smart city’, one of the key ingredients will be an efficient transport system. As most governments and city authorities face financial constraints, incremental improvements in the existing systems is the most likely way forward. In London, new trains and signalling are improving the capacity of the Underground but that then reveals previously
  • Sandra Phillips of Movmi: ‘We’re all trying to get people moving without a car’
    April 30, 2021
    Movmi founder Sandra Phillips talks to Adam Hill about why transport integration is sometimes a matter of trust – and how to empower women in transportation