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VOLVO'S CRASH SCENE INVESTIGATIONS LEAD TO IMPROVED SAFETY FEATURES
A recent accident in the north of Sweden could have been deadly. On a dark winter night, Samir Laadra was a passenger in a friend's Volvo S60 when it was hit by an oncoming car. The impact on the right side was just inches from where Laadra was sitting. "Everything turned black and quiet," he said. "I woke up twenty minutes later and I was surprised I was still alive."
Despite the accident's severity, Laadra walked away from the crash with a slight concussion and a few bruises, scrapes and scratches. Several months later he was invited to see a reconstruction of the crash, assembled by Volvo's Traffic Accident Research Team. "The side impact took place at a high speed which gave us the opportunity to study how well our protective systems functioned." said Thomas Broberg, deputy head of the Volvo Cars Safety Center. "This kind of research is a vital link in our drive to build safer cars." The investigation is one example of the over 32,000 accidents Volvo's Traffic Accident Research Team has analyzed over the past 36 years. "In reality, every crash is different and there are millions of crash scenarios," said John-Fredrik Grönvall, manager of Volvo's Traffic Accident Research Team. "Volvo's in-depth studies allow us to see how our systems work in real life. We can reconstruct the accident and repeat it in the controlled environment of our laboratory."
 The team evolved from a Volvo research project in the 1960's that studied injury-reducing effects of the three-point safety belt, which was introduced by the company in 1959, and is now used by all manufacturers throughout Europe and North America. Not only did the results show that the safety belts reduced injuries by 50 percent, it also gave the company valuable information that could be used in shaping future products and safety systems. In 1970, Volvo established the industry's first in-house crash research team. When a crash involving a Volvo takes place within about an hour of travel from Volvo Cars Safety Center in Gothenburg, the team is notified by the SOS emergency response service. The team investigates the most serious events, taking measurements and photographs, and conducting interviews with the police, witnesses and, when possible, the vehicles' occupants. The vehicle is transported to Volvo's Safety Center for further examination, and the team follows up on injuries by requesting medical information.
"In these in-depth studies we are looking at the quality of the data," said Ingrid Skogsmo, Volvo Cars safety director. "These investigations allow us to understand the surroundings, how the car performed how the systems worked, and why injuries may have occurred." Resulting safety innovations have included the Volvo Side Impact Protection System (SIPS) which was introduced in 1991. Since then, the system has continuously been enhanced. In 1994 side air-bags were added and inflatable side curtains in 1998. More recently, the team's research on rear-end collisions led to the development of Volvo's Whiplash Protection System (WHIPS), which has reduced the number of whiplash injuries by more than 50 percent, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an independent research organization in the United States.
Grönvall believes recent innovations like the Blind Spot Information System (BLIS), which helps the car's driver identify when a vehicle is in its blind spot, and Active Cruise Control (ACC), which monitors the distance to the vehicle ahead and adjusts speed to maintain a set distance, are only the beginning. "The real-life accidents we study are completely different from anything that can be performed in the development of a car," he said. "We will continue to use those results to increase the level of safety in each new generation of Volvo vehicles."
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