Aiming for a zero road toll
Volvo’s XC60 is a step towards achieving the crashless car, writes TOBY HAGON.
Volvo’s City Safety System, featured for the first time in the XC60 compact soft-roader, will help drivers avoid low-speed collisions.
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It’s a regular day in Volvo’s crash lab at the company’s headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden. An adult-sized crash-test dummy is being strapped into the company’s just-unveiled XC60 four-wheel-drive, which debuts a new crash-avoidance technology called City Safety.
As the name implies, the system is most useful in stop-start city traffic, where its camera and sensors can detect a potential crash, trigger the brakes and help the five-seat off-roader avoid a minor traffic bingle. City Safety only works at speeds up to 30 km/h, so is unlikely to ever save a life. But with prevalence of low-speed crashes - Volvo says 75% of all crashes occur at less than 30 km/h - there’s obvious potential for reducing repair bills and lowering insurance premiums.
Such technology, however, doesn’t obviate the need for airbags, crumple zones and seatbelts - yet. Like all modern cars, the XC60 is still very easily crashed - in the wrong hands - which is why Volvo persists with 400 controlled crash tests each year in one of the world’s most advanced automotive crash-test facilities. Like most new cars, the XC60 is also laced with airbags and a body structure designed to absorb crash energy and divert it away from the occupants. The dummy in today’s crash will deliver data to be used for further improving occupant protection.
In the future, though, the billions of dollars invested by car makers in crash testing and facilities could be spent elsewhere. City Safety is indicative of the thinking within Volvo and other car makers that’s seen the focus on vehicle safety development evolve from occupant protection to crash avoidance.
Volvo has a vision that, in a little over a decade, occupants of its vehicles will avoid death and serious injury. The so-called Mobility 2020 Vision is a goal of a zero road toll by the year 2020 and one that Volvo has set as an ambitious goal for its 25,000 workers. Volvo says Mobility 2020 is “a framework for the company’s aim to maintain leadership in the field of safety and the environment”.
It’s a bold statement from a brand synonymous with safety and one that could come back to haunt the Swedish maker.
However, Volvo has the safety runs on the board. It pioneered such everyday features as the three-point seatbelt and side-curtain airbag.
Still, Volvo admits the idea of no one being seriously injured or killed in a car is difficult to fathom.
“It’s very challenging, but for the company it’s a very good target,” says Jan Ivarsson, senior manager for safety strategies and requirements at the Volvo safety centre. “The biggest challenge is having the knowledge.”
source:smh
Tags: A, Aiming, for, road, toll, zero