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08/08/2011
REVIEW By ALISTAIR KENNEDY
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One of the good news stories that’s all too often overlooked in favour of death and destruction by our headline writers is the consistent decline in the number of fatalities on Australian roads.
In 2010 there were 1368 road deaths in Australia, the lowest number since 1949. This despite the fact that there were around 16 million registered vehicles in 2010 compared with just over one million in 1949. In other words if the same percentage of deaths per vehicle applied in 2010 as in 1949 then around 18,600 people would have died last year.
While politicians and bureaucrats are quick to jump in and claim credit, the real heroes are the vehicle manufacturers who are continuously working at making their vehicles safer. While some of these safety features have become mandatory, such as seat belts and, currently in process, electronic stability control, the vast majority are done voluntarily, despite the well-established fact that most buyers are reluctant to spend extra money on optional safety features. Give a teenager shopping for their first car the choice between ABS brakes or an upgraded sound system and guess which most will choose?
No car company has a prouder reputation for automotive safety than Volvo. The Swedish manufacturer has long been renowned for its road safety work, including ongoing research and development on how to minimise injury and death. Indeed the company has set itself the highly-ambitious goal of designing cars that do not crash. Equally challenging is the short-term goal: “by 2020 no-one should be killed or injured in a Volvo.”
We recently spent at day at Sydney’s Eastern Creek raceway revisiting and/or familiarising ourselves with many of Volvo’s innovative safety features in the new S60 sedan. In four hours at the track we were able to carry out a number of tests and came away impressed by the thinking and engineering behind the features detailed in this review. The potential life saving systems certainly have Volvo well on its way to the achieving its ambitious safety targets.
Above and beyond the standard safety features such as seat belts, airbags, stability control, etc Volvo lists 18 different safety technologies that are available with the S60. These can be broken down into two broad categories: those that prevent crashes from occurring and those that reduce the damage caused by the crash. Not all 18 are available in Australia and most are extra-cost options.
Among those in the prevention category are:
Driver Alert Control (DAC) is designed to alert the driver when they the car senses they might be drowsy or distracted. It uses a camera mounted at the front of the car that detects lane markings and alerts the driver with both an audible alarm and a dashboard message when it detects erratic driving behaviour.
Lane Departure Warning (LDW) uses the same system to alert the driver, this time with a rumble-strip sound when it detects that the vehicle is about to cross a lane marker without the turn indicator being used.
Adaptive Cruise Control with Queue Assist (ACC QA) is an extension of the standard cruise control system that effectively locks the car onto the closest vehicle in front of it and maintains the appropriate distance, varying the car’s speed as required at speeds above 30 km/h. At speeds below 30 km/h Queue Assist operates and can slow the car down to stop and then resume.
Distance Alert (DA) uses the car’s head-up display to warn when the car is approaching to close to the vehicle in front.
Blind Spot Information System (BLIS) uses cameras mounted on the side mirrors to monitor an area about three metres to the side and ten metres to the rear of the car and activates a small orange light on the inside of the A-pillar when another vehicle enters that area. Drivers who don’t adjust their mirrors correctly can benefit from this, though we would prefer to have the drivers doing the right thing in the first place.
Roll Stability Control System (RSC) is activated when it senses that there is a risk of the vehicle rolling over. It stabilises the car by braking one or more of the wheels as required and, if necessary, reducing engine torque.
Collision Warning with Full Auto Brake (CMS) alerts the driver when it senses that a forward collision with another vehicle or a pedestrian is likely. Brake Support then assists the driver’s braking until, when needed, Full Auto Brakes takes over and applies full brake force.
City Safety is designed to either prevent or reduce the incidence of low-speed collisions at speeds up to 30 km/h. It uses laser sensors built into the top of the car’s windscreen to detect other vehicles up to eight metres in front of it and apply the necessary amount of brake force to avoid a collision. At speeds of up to 15 km/h Volvo claims that City Safety should avoid impact completely while at speeds between 15 and 30 km/h it will either avoid impact or at least reduce the severity of the impact.
Once a crash has taken place there are a number of systems designed to reduce the risk of injury. These include:
Side Impact Protection System (SIPS) uses high-tensile steel to reinforce the sides of the Volvo to reduce the risk of the penetration into the passenger compartment.
Whiplash Protection System (WHIPS), as the name implies is designed to reduce the risk of neck injury in a rear-end collision with the front seat backrest and head restraint moving forward at the same speed as the occupant’s body to dampen the incoming force.
Roll Over Protection System (ROPS) uses a gyroscope to detect when the vehicle reaches an angle at which is unavoidable and instantly activates the curtain airbags and seatbelt pre-tensioners, cuts off fuel supply to the engine, unlocks the doors and turns on the interior lights.
So, can Volvo really reach its goal of the perfectly safe vehicle within the next decade?
While it might sound impossible a look back over a similar period time shows that Volvo produced a futuristic Safety Concept Car that included all of the features listed above. At the time such a production car would no doubt have appeared just as unlikely. |
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