The car that just cannot, will not, crash? Volvo is trying hard to make that happen...
Volvo, the Swedish car and commercial vehicle manufacturer, says its vision is to design cars that should not crash. In the shorter perspective, the aim is that by 2020, no one should be killed or injured in a Volvo.
‘We don't accept that people lose their lives in airplane accidents, so why should we regard car accidents as inevitable?’ says Jan Ivarsson, head of Safety Strategy at the Volvo Car Corporation. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that some 1.2 million people are killed and more than 50 million are injured in traffic accidents every year. Volvo is determined to take the lead by using its vision of a collision-free future as a guiding principle.
‘Continuous research and enhancement of safety in and around our cars will be essential for achieving a safer driver environment and a collision-free future. In this aim we invite fruitful cooperation with authorities and the automotive industry,’ says Ivarsson.
The Volvo Cars Traffic Accident Research Team has investigated traffic accidents since 1970. Today, its accident database contains information about more than 36,000 accidents. By using knowledge from real traffic situations in the research, Volvo has learned how to design cars that offer a very high level of safety in collisions.
The company regards this as a very important base of knowledge when identifying high-tech solutions that can help to entirely avoid or mitigate accidents. In order to take this a step further, Volvo's Traffic Accident Research Team not only studies crashed cars but also investigates driving scenarios including driver behaviour in order to learn more about what can lead to hazardous traffic situations.
‘With more and more advanced technology, we design cars that help the driver avoid accidents and hopefully also avoid exposure to dangerous situations,’ says Ivarsson.
Volvo follows the principle that the driver should be in command. The car’s ‘intelligence’ should support the driver, for instance by monitoring drowsiness or distraction. It can also warn the driver when the distance to other cars is too short. It is not until the driver fails to react and a collision is imminent or unavoidable, that the car ‘takes over’ from the driver, for example by braking automatically. The lowered impact speed leads to less crash energy, which in turn increases the performance of the car's protective safety systems such as seat belts, airbags and crumple zones.
In the near future Volvo plans to introduce safety technologies that make it possible to detect and auto-brake for pedestrians and even auto-steer away from oncoming cars. With this new vision, Volvo Cars challenges not only itself but also the automotive industry and governments, since a collision-free future cannot be obtained by Volvo alone. Safe traffic has three main stakeholders: car manufacturers, drivers and those who control infrastructure (government authorities).
Creative cooperation between road traffic authorities and other parts of the automotive industry is important in order to gain solutions that will have a big impact. ‘There is considerable safety potential in creating communication between cars and infrastructure. Two cars could for example warn each other of queues or slippery roads. Infrastructure sensors could warn the driver of people or animals crossing the road,’ explains Ivarsson.
This requires that all cars speak the same ‘language’ regardless of car brand, so international standards are needed. The driver and passengers must understand the importance of following traffic rules and using the car's safety equipment.
‘The three-point safety belt invented by Volvo was introduced as standard equipment nearly 50 years ago. At that time we believed it was so important to mankind that we offered the patent entirely free of charge to all manufacturers. It is still regarded as the most life-saving safety equipment in cars. Nevertheless, many people still do not use it. There is still a lot we can do to inform people about safety in cars of today,’ says Ivarsson.
