Volvo’s 2020 vision: The injury-proof car

updated 12:06 p.m. ET May 1, 2008

GOTHENBURG, Sweden - The destruction of the orange sedan with its slapdash paintwork may have been intentional but it was far from wanton. It was all part of Volvo’s bid to create an injury-proof car by 2020.

While that vehicle of the future may lack the self-awareness of the crime-fighting Trans Am in 1980s TV series Knight Rider, experts say it will be able to steer, brake and find out about the road ahead from within a vast electronic bumper.

And if all goes according to plan, its driver and passengers will escape even the most serious crash unhurt.

Volvo is far from the only player in what Claes Tingvall, the Swedish road administration’s head of traffic safety, calls the biggest revolution in the auto industry since the seatbelt.

Automakers, parts suppliers, governments and global agencies from the United Nations to the OECD are all looking at ways to relegate to memory the roughly 1.2 million deaths and 50 million injuries caused by motor vehicle crashes each year.

But in what some analysts see as a bid to hold its lead in consumer perceptions of safety, the Swedish carmaker now owned by Ford is the first to set a target date to eliminate death and injury in its cars.

“I think if you look into the future, we as a community will not accept that we have injuries,” said Jan Ivarsson, leader of the Volvo safety team with specialists in everything from biomechanics to engineering to behavioral science.

“We have other things that are important in life.”

While Volvo is working on pedestrian safety as well, the 2020 goal centers on those inside its vehicles.

Tingvall, who is a force behind the Swedish government’s own plan to stop traffic deaths through better infrastructure, doubts Volvo’s target is fully achievable but said even a tenfold reduction in injury rates would yield dramatic benefits.

Borrowing principles from industries like aviation, the matrix of systems Volvo and other carmakers are working on will interact to start crash prevention and mitigation hours, rather than milliseconds, before impact.

Creative destruction
Which brings us back to the orange sedan, its nose crushed pug-small after powering down a tunnel at 35 miles an hour into an 850-tonne steel-encased block, at what analysts say is one of the most advanced crash-test centers in the world.

Bob Strong / Reuters Hampus Olsson, an analysis engineer, checks a test dummy before a crash at the Volvo Safety Centre.

The Gothenburg complex’s moveable crash block and two 150-meter tunnels, including the only rotating test tunnel in the industry, allow Volvo to simulate everything from a head-on smash into a bus stop to a 90-degree vehicle-to-vehicle impact.

The rotating tunnel can also reverse and shoot a car outside, into the rock face or the pond behind the center.

As with many of the 400 crashes staged there each year, the test of a new engine configuration on the orange S80 — orange shows up well on video — took two weeks to set up, will take another two to analyze and was over in a 10th of a second.

It was filmed from all angles, including a glass-topped pit below, while sensors and painted rulers on the car, crash block and dummies yielded scores of measurements.

Volvo’s Ivarsson said the two male biomechanical measurement devices — we know them as crash-test dummies — would have walked off, if they could, with little more than bruises and broken ribs from what was by any gauge a significant smash.

Still, crash tests are only part of the puzzle.

The 20-member safety team also gathers real-world data from governments, insurance firms and, with a crash-site unit on 24-7 call, conducts its own field investigations into the causes of collisions and how they could have been prevented.

Print this Email this Blog this  IM this

MORE FROM AUTOS

Autos Section Front

High gas prices are driving scooter sales up GM mulls selling Chevrolets in South Korea Memorial Day travel hit by high fuel costs Smart car gets highest score in crash tests Ford recalling more than 655,000 trucks How Tata is making the world's cheapest car What women want: Her favorite vehicles Macho Movers: Ten favorite cars for men High gas prices spawn songs, symbolic acts Honda shows off improvements in fuel cell Autos Section Front   Add Autos headlines to your news reader: