Accidents happen everywhere, anytime, and to everyone. Everyday, there is an accident being reported.Some are minor but almost all are fatal. Now, Volvo aims to make people indomitable from such accidents through the injury-proof car by 2020 which would give assurance to every drivers and passengers that they will survive accidents especially fatal ones.
Volvo, owned by Ford Motor Co., is spearheading the battle to produce a “matrix of systems” which will use radar, sonar, and other advanced technology to avoid and alleviate accidents. As what always happens in crashes, drivers are shocked thus, forget what to do. Volvo’s injury-proof car would steer and brake on its own when needed which would diminish the pre-impact speed by 10mph, thus death-rate would also be lessened.
Jan Ivarson, head of Volvo safety team, said that our community in the near future will not accept injuries because there are other things in life which are more important.
The target deadline of Volvo, which is 2020, is not long in auto industry. As of now, Volvo has been doing testing at its vehicle-safety testing center in Gothenburg, Sweden. They already have two 150-meter tunnels where engineers would imitate head-on and side-impact collisions. Volvo has developed all ways to destroy a car and employ the world’s most advanced car and test dummy torture chamber.
In the recent S8o test mule, this was set up for two weeks and another two to scrutinize, a 35 mph by an 850-ton steel-clad block was set up in a carefully choreographed collisions. Careful and critical examinations were done to get accurate results. Engineers shot the wreck from several angles. They had put camera in a glass-topped pit to record it from beneath. Further, they had put sensors on the car, crash block and two male “biochemical measurement devices” or widely known as crash test dummies. 20 members comprise Volvo’s A-Team who gathers information from government agencies and insurance companies. They also have a crash-site crew who are on call 24/7 to probe real-life crashes to decipher the cause and solutions to prevent it to happen again.
As you can observe, there are numerous safety devices coming out in the market to maintain optimum safety. Do you ever think of it? Do you think it just pop out from nowhere? Definitely not. Well, people are becoming more and more practical these days and car manufacturers keep on answering peoples’ needs. Accidents cause people to spend large amount of money. Scott McCornick, Connected Vehicle Trade president, said that $450 billion is lost in accidents and deaths yearly.
Indeed, safety is the most important for almost all or perhaps to everyone. From the survey of 500 consumers, more than two-thirds said that safety is the most important technology to incorporate in a vehicle. People are more than willing to spend extra amount for it. Among several car makes, Volvo is considered as the safest car on the road based from the poll done by Consumer Reports. The three-point safety belts, side-impact airbags, rear-facing child seats, and many others were invented by Volvo.
The tough competition in the industry is known by Volvo. That’s why Volvo wants to stay ahead from several auto makers which also have special safety features like the Pre-Collision System of Lexus and the PRE-SAFE braking system of Mercedes Benz. As of now, Volvo is the first to attempt for an injury-proof car and sure that it would not be the last. More and more innovations will be made to achieve maximum safety.
It would truly be a great advancement in auto industry if Volvo’s injury-proof car would materialize. Not only large sum of money would be saved but more importantly the significant lives of humanity.
