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September 29, 2006
VOLVO’S VEHICLE SAFETY PLANS, THINKING DESCRIBED
In a lengthy policy statement published on its website, Volvo has set forth what it calls “cutting edge solutions and visions to further enhance automotive safety today long into tomorrow.” Noting that “the issue of safety has defined and differentiated Volvo Cars” since the Swedish company’s start, the statement observed that, “The motoring environment grows ever more complex, with more and more things fighting for a drivers attention, both outside and inside their cars, putting extra pressure on their ability to cope with what’s happening around them.”
Volvo’s “new safety paradigm,” it said, “builds on the belief humans are already suffering information overload in our intense traffic environments and the only way forward is to provide ‘sophisticated, advanced automated driver support programs in addition to Volvo’s traditional passive and active safety approach’.” The “visionary answer for Volvo Cars is to equip its vehicles with highly sophisticated ‘intelligent’ systems that not only enhance the physical perception of drivers, but can even take over direct control of the car in critical situations where a driver is not responding sufficiently fast enough to avoid an emerging crisis.”
A company engineer, Jan Ivarsson, is quoted as saying that the company’s challenge now is to “deliver software and hardware approaches that serve as a sympathetic ‘co-driver’ for the motorist.” Volvo believes the answer to crashes caused by driver error is to “provide driver alert functions designed to reduce overload by providing technologies that can anticipate an upcoming problem and help solve it, either by alerting the driver or in the ultimate case by temporarily taking over control of the vehicle.” The statement provides details of design approaches developed by the company to reduce driver overload.
Posted by MVHAP at September 29, 2006 12:43 PM