David Williams: Volvo’s crucial investigations key to making our cars safer

Crash analysis: Volvo’s research team at work following an accident near Gothenburg

There’s a little-known department at Volvo’s Swedish headquarters in Gothenburg where they create alternative realities — as in the film, Sliding Doors. It’s where bone-shattering, real-life crashes are deconstructed before being simulated in a parallel universe with entirely different, more agreeable outcomes.

It starts with a call from the traffic police — often in the dead of night — to the firm’s Crash Investigation Team, which is on standby 24/7. Alerted to all serious crashes involving Volvo within an hour of the firm’s office, the team hastens to the scene to analyse it in minute detail.

Examining skid marks, debris trails and car wrecks, interviewing witnesses, conferring with police investigators and recording their findings in precise detail, the Volvo team builds a comprehensive record of the accident and the vital seconds leading up to it.

By analysing nearly 70 accidents a year and hauling stricken vehicles back to their HQ where they launch a forensic analysis of how individual components performed, Volvo has created a remarkable 43,000-vehicle/70,000-occupant database that’s the envy of the motor industry and that directly influences the design of all future models, including the new XC60. “Safety is a knowledge-driven process,” says Hakan Gustafsson, Research Leader Safety, who often finds himself wrenched from family life to attend potentially disturbing roadside scenes. “It’s the key to making our cars safer.”

He explains how the investigation — one small part of the work at the Accident Centre — is part of Volvo’s underlying ‘circle of life’ ethos, whereby each new car is built using knowledge gained from its predecessors, ensuring a process of continuous refinement and improvement.

It’s tough work, aimed at improving the way that metal, glass, rubber, airbag and belt interact to protect in a crash, and also discovering why drivers take actions precipitating accidents in the first place. Drivers are sent 150-section questionnaires probing their role in the accident and the data — together with insurance company reports and police observations — is fed into powerful computers.

It is at this point that serious crashes are ‘recreated’ in computer simulation, bringing them to life in slow-motion, depicting the results of drivers’ actions as they steer, brake, become distracted or simply panic in the run-up to impact.

It’s as close as you can get to filming the event itself, giving Volvo’s scientists the raw data needed to refine the performance of braking, steering and other vital safety systems.

The magic begins — as in Sliding Doors — when the accident is re-run, applying technology that Volvo is developing and that, had it been in place, might have mitigated or avoided the accident entirely.

Seeing the films play side by side — one car wrecked, the other brought to a halt before the collision takes place, by systems such as Intersection Assist or Steer Assist, is eerie. As the systems are refined and rolled out to market, they are making the difference between life and death.

Equally eerie is the hangar where the wrecks are stored. In one corner are the remains of a Volvo V40, extensively damaged in a high-speed head-on crash with a speeding BMW.

The front of the Volvo was reduced to rubble but it did its job as planned, absorbing huge amounts of energy in the blink of an eye — leaving its driver with only minor injuries.

In another is a V60 that crashed on Christmas Day, leaving the road but protecting its family of four from injury. It’s next to an XC60 whose occupants lived to drive another day after a frontal impact with a Jeep.

“It’s part of our ethos — Vision 2020 — that people should not have to accept risk to life or limb just by transporting themselves,” says Thomas Broberg, Senior Technical Adviser Safety. It mirrors Volvo’s aim that by 2020, no one should be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo.

Volvo XC60

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For Broberg — an engineer — the big current challenge is human behaviour, including bringing drivers’ attention back to the task in hand after becoming distracted — perhaps in a self-driving car. “In the future we want not just to make cars safer in a crash, but to help motorists avoid crashing in the first place,” he says.

Solutions Broberg’s team are considering include better monitoring of drivers’ alertness and attention, increasing the efficiency of assistance systems such as Autonomous Emergency Braking, rear collision warning systems and ‘connected’ cars that warn each other of hazards.

“Look at the transformation in smartphones over the past decade,” Broberg says. “That’s what’s happening in car safety. Now the biggest opportunity to reduce crashes is through human behaviour and avoidance.

“Understanding that is the best way to tackle the 1.3 million annual road deaths around the world.” Broberg adds: “It’s mind-blowing when you think what a connected car can do. You can be so much more prepared. Today we listen to the radio for information. But imagine, in the future, when cars ‘talk’ to each other; you’ll know about ice, fog, pedestrians or tricky conditions before you get there.”

MAXIMISING PROTECTION

Some of Volvo’s most cutting-edge work is being conducted by the department of Lotta Jakobsson, Senior Technical Leader, Injury Prevention, whose holy grail is to know “everything about the car’s occupants; their weight, bone density, height and so on”.

It’s so that, in future, a car’s hightech defence systems — including airbags and seat belts — can be finetuned to each occupant, maximising protection, especially for the elderly population, who are more fragile. Her dream, says Jakobsson, whose Phd was in whiplash injuries, is knowing the precise position in which car occupants are most comfortable. “Because that’s how they will be sitting if there is an impact,” she says.

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