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Safety beyond stars – 40 years of researching real-world accidents
publication date: Aug 14, 2010
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author/source: Robin Roberts
For 40 years, Volvo Car Corporation's Accident
Research Team has studied, documented and analysed over 40,000 traffic
accidents involving Volvo cars in the real traffic environment.
The knowledge gained has helped develop many of the new and innovative safety systems Volvo has launched over the years.
Every
time a serious accident involving a Volvo occurs within a 60 mile
radius of Gothenburg, the Traffic Accident Research Team is alerted via
the official emergency switchboard - day or night. |  | At least one
person from Volvo Cars goes to the scene. If possible, the police
postpone moving the vehicles until Volvo Cars' technicians have arrived.
This allows them to conduct a general study, which is documented with
measurements and photographs. The police, witnesses and, if possible,
those directly involved are all interviewed. After this, the car is
transported to a workshop or to Volvo Cars Safety Centre for further
detailed analysis whilst other valuable information is gathered
including injuries sustained.
When all the information is available,
the material is analysed by staff from the Volvo Cars Safety Centre,
the design departments and medical expertise.
| | | In total, information
from about 40,000 accidents involving Volvos has been gathered since the
unit started operating in 1970, and 2,100 in-depth analyses including
comprehensive documentation have been conducted. This forms a valuable
database that provides input in the development of new products.
The
Accident Research Team was born after a successful project which
measured the effects of the safety belt in real-world traffic accidents.
This year-long project took place in 1966 - a few years after the
three-point safety belt was introduced as standard in all Volvo models.
The results showed a huge 50 per cent injury-reduction as a result of
the safety belt.
Volvo's engineers realised the importance of
understanding exactly what happens to the car's occupants and the car
itself in the course of an accident in order to develop better and safer
products in the future. As a result, Volvo Cars' own Accident Research
Team was inaugurated in 1970.
The method that is used today has been
refined over the years, but all the information is still obtained from
actual road accidents. |  |
"We have to assume that our customers don't
always do what we expect them to do. They respond differently to various
situations. That is why we need to understand the driver's behaviour
and how it influences the sequence of events in a real-life accident,"
explains research unit member John Fredrik Grönvall.
Work in the
Accident Research Team follows two main tracks. Firstly, in-depth
studies of individual accidents that provide insight into how a car's
protective systems behave and how the people involved are injured.
Secondly, broad-based statistics that make it possible to chart the
likelihood of a certain type of accident occurring.
The Accident
Research Team shares an anniversary with the Volvo Cars Safety Centre,
which is celebrating ten years of operation this year. On March 29,
2000, Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf opened the centre, which is still
one of the most advanced facilities of its kind in the world.
|  | Since
its establishment, every new Volvo model has undergone between 100 and
150 different crash tests in the laboratory to test a variety of
accident scenarios.
Even before the car exists as a physical object it
will already have been tested thousands of times as a prototype using
virtual simulators.
A total of about 3,000 physical crash tests have
been carried out in the laboratory since its inauguration in 2000. |
All
this work aims at ensuring that the vehicle's various safety systems
interact as intended and provide effective protection for all the car's
occupants, irrespective of their size, at various speeds and in various
accident scenarios. The tests supplement the accident research carried
out in the field by the Accident Research Team. |
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