Posted on 01/27/2016 4:41:13 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Volvo has made a pretty bold statement this week. It says it wants to make things so that no one dies in a Volvo or because of a collision with one by the year 2020. "If you meet Swedish engineers, they're pretty genuine," said Lex Kerssemakers, CEO of Volvo Cars North America. "They don't say things when they don't believe in it." A pretty serious lot it seems. People who say what the mean and mean what they say.
"With the development of full autonomy we are going to push the limits of automotive safety," says Volvo safety engineer Erik Coelingh, "because if you make a fully autonomous vehicle you have to think through everything that potentially can happen with a car." Elon Musk has said something similar recently. In his opinion, full autonomous driving is quite simple at speeds below 10 mph. It is not especially difficult on the highway where there is no cross traffic, no pedestrians, and no bicyclists.
Where autonomous driving gets really hard is in the city at speeds between 10 and 50 mph. That's when autonomous software has to be able to distinguish between a cardboard cutout of a person and a real people. It has to anticipate all the things that people might do. It even has to know what to expect from someone who might be drunk or under the influence of recreational drugs.
Volvo's safety systems will operate constantly in the background, monitoring the world around the car. It will identify bicyclists that may come flying unexpectedly through an intersection, a car that stops short ahead, or a pedestrian who is about to step off the sidewalk and dash in front of the car....
(Excerpt) Read more at gas2.org ...
I want the XC90. I heard the other day there hasn’t been a death in one of those in 4 years. I might have to settle for the XC60. But definitely looking at those two.
Of course, that may mean a higher risk of death for the persons in the other vehicle.
I’ve been looking at the xc90 also. I am also hoping cars will someday be ennui proof.
The Volvo Titanic?
I had a 1969 Volvo 144. Drove the car for 300 thousand miles until it finally fell apart one evening on my way to Atlantic City.
It’s like computer security and computer hacking — first one side is up and then the other side has an advantage. Back and forth. Back and forth.
Volvo may be death-proof in 2020, but some other company will come along with a car that’s guaranteed to kill people.
As long as you don’t take a drive outside an area served by a well financed fire dept, you’ll do fine.
Automakers have increasingly moved to higher strength steel to make cars safer. Before that 36,000 psi steel was the norm. Now 120,000 psi steel is in use for certain components.
Sounds great? It depends. If you’re in a car wreck that leads to entrapment, many fire departments don’t have rescue tools that can sever 120,000 psi steel. Instead the jaws on the cutting tools snap.
Add to that the use of magnesium for components such as dashboard supports. Look up what it takes to put out a magnesium fire. Hint: it’s not water.
Now imagine being entrapped in a car, it catches on fire from either something in the car or maybe the Mack truck that hit you, and the fire department can’t put out the ignited magnesium or cut you out of the car.
Get the picture? They don’t tell you about the potential in their ads. As a volunteer fire fighter I can tell you our old set of rescue tools probably won’t work on your car. And, we can’t afford a new set that can.
Good luck.
Magnesium??? Why Magnesium?
Yep. Volvo XC90 is one of the few vehicles with driver death rate of zero “per million registered vehicle years”.
(The only vehicle on the zero-death list that’s not an SUV or van is the Audi A4 AWD.)
http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/driver-death-rates
We’ve had a high school senior and her just graduated from high school boyfriend hit by an illegal alien running a red light and the car burst into flames . . . I don’t think it was a Volvo . . . but still . . . not a way to go.
I do know I won’t be buying a Chevrolet or a Chrysler.
I live in the new automobile mfg. country of the southeast. :)
Worse one I heard of was a woman that was partially ejected through a windshield and got stuck. The car caught fire and no one could get close enough to get her out. She was still alive.
We did not like the obstructed visibility rear in the 90. Got a great deal on a smaller V50 T-5. Had it four years now, and zero repair. Only regular maintenance. Great car, but our old SAABs get much better mileage. All are Turbos.
1999 9-5 v6 auto gets us 26 mpg. (Wagon)
2001 9-3 4cyl 5 speed stick gets us 31 mpg.
2011 Volvo T-5 auto gets us 21 mpg.
I dont want cars and trucks talking and deciding in the case an accident is unavoidable, deciding my car is gonna take the biggest hit.
I haven’t bought a car since 1987. I too am a little surprised at the lack of visibility in modern cars. A rental agency recently gave me a Ford Flex (I was expecting an Edge) and I really liked it. It’s ugly only on the outside:)
There ain’t death proof nothing, including Tooth-pics.
IF we ever get another car it will probably be a Flex. Ugly is a nice way of describing them, but their utilitarian appeal is what we like. We have lots of supplies to pick up weekly, and currently our old 9-5 SAAB is doing the job very well. The Volvo is too small compared to the SAAB for our weekly runs so we use it for goin’ out to the bright lights of the city occasionally.
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