|
By
ALISTAIR KENNEDY
20 October 2008
No car company has a prouder reputation for automotive safety than
Volvo. The Swedish company has long been renowned for its road
safety work, including ongoing research and development on how to
minimise injury and death. Indeed the company, through a strategy
called Mobility 2020, has set itself a goal that no occupant of
any Volvo car should be seriously or fatally injured by the year
2020.
As
one step in this process we were recently able to test a new
automatic braking system called City Safety designed to reduce the
incidence of low-speed collisions.
Many
drivers will have been involved in the nose-to-tail bumps and
scrapes that are an unfortunate fact of life in city and suburban
driving. While such low-speed crashes are not likely to be
life-threatening they can still cause serious injuries including
whiplash and broken bones.
More
pragmatically, these ‘minor’ collisions, can cause serious
disruptions to traffic flows as well as representing a large
proportion of motor vehicle repair costs, and therefore of
insurance claims.
Research
suggests that around 75 per cent of reported collisions occur at
speeds below 30 km/h and that in around half of these incidents
the driver has not braked prior to impact. So any system that can
reduce the incidence of such crashes is likely to become the next
big safety feature. And that’s just what Volvo has provided with
its City Safety system which will come standard in the new XC60
SUV due to arrive in Australia early next year.
Using
laser sensors built into the top of the car’s windscreen, City
Safety is able to detect other vehicles up to eight metres in
front of it. When these sensors determine that a collision is
imminent, and that the driver has failed to brake in time, then
the system will 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.
Importantly
City Safety does not over-ride any driver commands. So, if the
driver does belatedly notice that there is an imminent risk of
collision, and steers to avoid it, then the automatic braking
system will not intervene.
During
our recent trip to Spain with Volvo we were able to test City
Safety as part of the international launch of the new XC60 model.
The test involved driving directly at a full-sized, car-shaped
balloon without applying the brakes, something that’s very hard
to do the first time around.
We
made several runs at around 15 km/h and on each occasion the
system stopped the car with room to spare. Between 25 and 30 km/h
the car either stopped in time or lightly nudged the ‘car’ in
front. Whenever we swerved to avoid impact the brakes were not
applied although we did clip the balloon once in trying to avoid
it.
Because
the sensors pick up the reflective surface of the vehicle ahead to
trigger the automatic braking it will not detect pedestrians or
other roadside objects. Indeed there is a question as to whether
it will recognize a really dirty car in front, and it of course
relies on the windscreen of the City Safety car being relatively
clean, although monitoring systems will alert the driver if the
windscreen should be cleaner.
Volvo
engineers are already working on enhancing the system for future
models with the eventual goal of making it standard on all
vehicles in its range.
So,
could City Safety be the ‘next big thing’ in road safety?
Let’s hope that economies of scale will allow it to be, and that
it’s able to filter down to the lower end of the market in the
same way as so many other recent safety innovations. It’s
certainly an exciting new feature with major benefits for the
day-to-day urban motorist, not just in its potential for reducing
car crash injuries but also in its capacity to save on repair
costs, both directly and through reduced insurance premiums.
Only
tow-truck operators and panel beaters need be wary of its
arrival…
© Copyright
Marque Publishing Company
|
