Volvo aims for uncrashable cars – Car Reviews, News & Advice

How high on your new car wish list is safety? For a growing number of car buyers it’s a prime concern...

Perhaps unsurprisingly Volvo is targeting such buyers, arguing its case as one of the world's safest carmakers. The company claims it leads brands such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Infiniti, Lexus and Volkswagen in developing systems that one day could make collisions a thing of the past.

Many of the systems being developed today concentrate on the avoidance of crashes, rather than minimising the consequences -- although the latter is also addressed by many of the new systems.

Volvo is currently in the process of rolling out its City Safety technology, a system that works at speeds up to 35km/h and is designed to at best avoid, or at worst minimise the effects of a nose-to-tail crash by braking automatically if the driver does not respond in time to avoid colliding with a car in front.

The company has also introduced features such as its BLIS Blind Spot Information System to warn drivers if a car is travelling in a position the driver may not easily see and Lane Change Warning, where the driver is alerted if the car veers out of its lane.

Mercedes-Benz is among other carmakers pioneering new safety technology with its own lane-keeping warning system, as well as blind spot and pedestrian detection. The German company also has its own collision avoidance system, as well as night vision on its premium models. Benz also has Attention Assist, a system that monitors driver behaviour and signals an alert if the car is being driven erratically.

At Volvo, the aim is clear. Volvo Australia's Technical Manager David Picket stated at a demonstration of its safety technologies attending by motoring.com.au: "Our aim is to create cars that do not crash, and in the short term to reduce deaths in Volvos to zero in 2020."

This bold statement sounds preposterous... Until you test the systems and experience a car that jams on the brakes with no intervention whatsoever from the driver if it detects an imminent collision.

We got behind the wheel of the Volvo S60 midsized premium car to test some of the automatic braking/detection systems available -- systems that take advantage of military-derived technology, employed in this instance to save lives.

Though we tested the safety systems in a controlled environment using crash test dummies (OH&S deems it too risky to test with live subjects), we can vouch that the the Volvo S60's Pedestrian Detection with Full Auto Brake and Collision Warning with Full Auto Brake systems are very effective. Indeed, it represents a step in the right direction for a company that wants to build the world's safest passenger vehicles.

"Safety is about knowledge," said Picket, who explained that data collected from real world car accidents provided the company with new insights.

"Since 1970 we've had accident investigation teams in Gothenburg [Sweden] that attend every accident a Volvo passenger car has been involved in. This is still going on now, and [Volvo’s operation in ] China has its own investigation system as well."

Volvo has contacts with police and insurance companies in Sweden and sends its team to examine crash scenes to improve its understanding of both how cars crash and why they crashed.

"We get the injury data as well," Picket said.

"We know what the injuries are to driver and passenger, so then we put this data into simulations."

The Test
 As a driver, there's something intrinsically wrong with accelerating to 30km/h directly into the path of a humanoid shape, and being instructed not to touch the brake. We're taught from the moment we begin driving not to run into things, and especially not to run over people.

I found the best way to attack the challenge was to simply look out the side window. And sure enough the car's array of cameras, radar and laser sensors detected a human and stopped the car before we collided. Impressive is an understatement.

The Volvo S60's Pedestrian Detection with Full Auto Brake is a complex system that makes use of military-derived software to decipher information gathered by the car's plethora of sensors. The system is optional on the Volvo S60 as part of Volvo's Driver Support Pack at $4990, which also adds other a handful of other techy safety features -- Lane Departure Warning, Distance Alert, Adaptive Cruise Control, Queue Assist and BLIS.

The tricky part for Volvo was tweaking the pedestrian detection software so it would distinguish between, say, a bollard and small child.

According to Pickett the Pedestrian Detection with Full Auto Brake can identify "up to 50 targets at once" without getting confused by roadside objects or even animals. So it possibly won't stop you running over Fido, but it will stop you from hitting a pedestrian.

Picket claims that Volvo's statistics show "inattention" as a contributing factor in 93 per cent of collisions involving pedestrians.

If the vehicle is travelling at 35km/h or less, Volvo says the car can avoid a collision with a bystander, while anything over 35km/h results in a reduction of trauma.

"The difference there is whether it's a fatality or an injury," added Picket.

The other system available on the Volvo S60 designed to reduce crashes and road trauma is the Collision Warning with Full Auto Brake system. It is similar to the aforementioned system in that it detects objects (cars in this instance) and will attempt to stop the car before it collides.

Volvo explained during the media briefing that the system can brake the S60 and avoid a collision at 35km/h or less, yet we were instructed to go no faster than 30km/h in the tests. When we pushed the speed to almost 35km/h we did in fact nudge the inflatable car, though at such a slow speed that no damage would have been done.

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