[Wed. 7th May, 2008]
Imagine a car which would be damaged in any accident but still would not injure any one inside the car.
Volvo Swedish maker is now aiming at 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, exports say it will be able to steer, break 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 around the world.
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.
While Volvo is working on pedestrian safety as well, the 2020 goal centers on those inside its vehicles.
Borrowing principles from industries like aviation, the matrix of systems Volvo & other carmakers are working on will interact to start crash prevention & mitigation hours, rather than milliseconds, before impact.