Volvo – The Leader in Automotive Safety
Volvo’s main focus is not only to get you where you’re going in style, but also to keep you and yours as safe as possible while you travel. Volvo Cars has been a leader in automotive safety for decades. Caring for the world we live in and the people around us is what we do best. Always having the customer in mind, safety is at the core of everything we do, and is central to our company’s culture. Volvo Cars are known for their technological integration and advanced safety features, aiming to pioneer intelligent technology solutions in mobility to protect what’s most important to you in your everyday life. We take safety seriously, so you can drive with peace of mind.
So what makes Volvo Cars the continual leader in automotive safety? We must begin with our most acclaimed lifesaver:
The Three-Point Safety Belt
In 1959, Volvo Cars engineer Nils Bohlin introduced the concept of the v-type three-point safety belts in Volvo vehicles. This cross-strap design made seat belts easier to use, and much safer. Volvo performed the standard industrial practice of patenting the design to protect their investments. This would have allowed Volvo to have a defensible advantage over competitors: 20 years of Monopoly rights in the U.S, the position to charge significant license fees to competitors, and/or maintain exclusivity to market their cars as the safest available.
Further demonstrating their extreme prioritization for safety, Volvo Cars took advantage of neither of these options. Rather, they opened the patent to allow, and even encourage, all competitors to adopt the design in the name of automotive safety.
2019 marked 60 years since Bohlin’s life-saving innovation, and it remains one to be celebrated. Volvo carved out a space in the competitive automotive industry to make driver and passenger safety the core of the brand. From 1959 onward, this leading safety innovation has saved over one million lives.
Data-based research & Safe Space Technology:
Volvo has always taken a data-driven approach to safety, using traffic data from real life situations to develop new safety technologies and make their vehicles even safer. More recently, Volvo has begun processing data from consenting customers’ cars in real time, allowing them to adapt and make their cars even safer. This lets Volvo make continuous and much faster improvements to their vehicles. The collected data includes continuous information on the vehicle’s environment via sensors such as the high-resolution LiDAR delivered by technology company Luminar.
The data collection allows Volvo engineers to quicker validate and verify Autonomous Drive (AD) features, and promote a safe roll-out of AD technology. Data is generated by millions of kilometers driven by tens of thousands Volvo drivers around the world. Thanks to this, engineers are also able to validate AD features for specific geographic locations much quicker and more effectively than with a limited number of vehicles on a test track. New features and verified updates to existing systems can be transferred rapidly through over-the-air-updates elevating the safety of Volvo cars step by step.
Volvo Cars’ fully electric flagship SUV has industry-leading safety technology as standard, helping us continue to save lives and set the standard for automotive safety. It comes with state-of-the-art sensors, including a LiDAR developed by Luminar and an autonomous driving computer powered by the NVIDIA DRIVE Orin™ system-on-a-chip, as standard.
Over time the vehicle will improve and have the hardware and software capabilities to allow it to take over on its own, in case the driver does not respond in life-threatening situations after repeated warnings. Therefore, while the driver always remains in ultimate control, the car and its safety technology are able to both support and watch over the driver like an attentive and alert passenger.
Building on the spatial and environmental awareness of your Volvo, its cutting-edge sensing technology provides a safe space in and around the vehicle. Safe Space Technology includes all standard safety features in Volvo cars, keeping you, your passengers, and those around you safe.
If you would like to explore our inventory of industry leading, technologically advanced Volvo vehicles, you can do so here. Your safety has been our priority from the start. Help us start protecting you and your loved ones today.