Safety is the other name for Volvo Cars

When you first step into an elegant Volvo, rest assured that you are about to enter one of the safest cars in the world! Sweden’s auto sweetheart Volvo Car Company boasts of building some of the safest cars on the planet.

Even its brand philosophy states, “‘Designed Around You’ is our translation of going an extra mile to understand customers better. This human-centric approach enables Volvo Cars to know the pulse of customers and gauge what they desire in a product. With this thought, the brand places the customer at the heart of its design.”

The company set sail on its car safety odyssey way back in 1959, when the three-point safety belt was developed to its modern form by Swedish inventor Nils Bohlin for Volvo, which introduced it as standard equipment on its cars. In the fifty-plus years since then, Volvo Cars has perfected automobile safety one step at a time, introducing one feature after another.

Having epitomised safe cars all these years, Volvo’s present goal is to eliminate fatalities in models manufactured after 2020. “Our priority and strategy is ‘total safety’. We have a vision to see that nobody is killed or injured in a car crash. The vision not only covers the car, but also considers people and the environment,” Lotta Jakobsson, Senior Technical Specialist of Injury Prevention at Volvo Cars Safety Centre, told Deccan Herald over phone from the company’s headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden. “When we talk ‘car safety’, it is not only about internal technologies and electronics. It also includes the exterior construction of the car, the hood, the boot, mechanics, and aerodynamics, among others. It also involves utilising knowledge about accidents, injuries, and their prevention,” she added.

Breathalyser and more
All of Volvo’s models integrate sophisticated safety features. Models like the S60 sedan use cameras, lasers, and radar to monitor the car’s progress. If the car crosses a lane line without a signal from the blinker, a chime sounds. If a pattern emerges, the dashboard flashes a ‘steaming coffee cup’ and the words ‘Time for a Break’. To instill better habits, the car rates the driver’s attentiveness on the drive, with bars like those on a mobile phone.

Similarly, in Europe, some Volvo cars contain a set of breathalyser systems to discourage drunken driving. When all else fails, the cars take pre-emptive action, which includes tightening seatbelts, charging brakes for maximum traction, and ultimately, stopping the car.

“The breathalyser technology today is helping drivers make best decisions, and keeping people, in and out of the car, safe. It specially aids taxi and fleet owners,” Jakobsson said.
Volvo is driving a major shift in the realm of ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems), and claims to be in a commanding position.

The company has perfected a simple auto-drive system called ‘platooning’, in which cars autonomously follow a professional driver.

“More recently, we have launched a new pilot project ‘Drive Me’, wherein the cars will be driving themselves, thanks to the onboard system sensors that will acclimatise cars to the surrounding environment, and enable their driving. It is a reflection of our ambition,” she said.

Drive Me’s first pilot project that will be in full swing by 2017, will see around 100 XC90 SUVs featuring the technology, and a specially conditioned route is being prepared in Gothenburg, where the cars (with occupants), will be tested.

Data from the real-world
Volvo relies on a host of lab and real world knowledge it has acquired over the years. Since the seventies, it has kept a full-time forensic team on call at Gothenburg, to reach any location within a sixty-mile radius — where a Volvo has gotten into an accident — with local police, to assess the wreckage and injuries.

This strategy has handed Volvo engineers a visceral sense of all that can go wrong in a car, and a database of more than 40,000 accidents to draw on for their designs.
As a result, the chances of getting hurt in a Volvo has dropped from more than 10 per cent to less than three per cent over the life of a car.

“We have also designed our own crash tests which also simulate road safety features and instances such as crossing the road, bumpy roads, puddles, etc. Our collected data and R&D help us test more, and get our cars to become safer for the future,” she added.

Talking about India, Jakobsson said that the safety features on Volvo’s cars are global in nature, except if a particular country’s laws and policies do not support a few features.

“In India, for instance, you are not allowed to activate a radar system on a car. But I hope that prevailing trends will change to permit more safety features in future,” she said.

The company sells five luxury models in the country — S80, S60, XC60, V40 Cross Country, and the latest XC90 — which is firm evidence of the Volvo-by-Volvo strategy.

For the all-safe XC90, Volvo Cars has developed Safe Positioning, which means that in a run-off road scenario, the car detects what is happening, and the front safety belts are tightened to keep the occupants in position.

The belts remain tight as long as the car is in motion. To help prevent spine injuries, energy-absorbing functionality between the seat and seat frame cushions the vertical forces that can arise when the car encounters a hard landing.

Meanwhile, India has not taken to car safety in a big way yet, with features being usually accepted as a premium requirement. But Jakobsson is hopeful.

“Safety is relevant when spoken in the context of cars. In Europe and the US, active safety systems are commonplace even on small cars, but it’s not the case in India. But with new technologies taking shape each year, and with supportive laws, safety solutions for cars will eventually become affordable,” Jakobsson said.

“By introducing innovations that are accessible and talked about, the former will benefit the industry,” she added.