Volvo's City Safety feature wins US award

29 March 2008

Auto manufacturers often take great pains to ensure that in the event of a serious accident, the occupants of their vehicles remain safe. Volvo can be a considered a pioneer in this area. Now, it has extended its expertise in the art of making vehicles safe to the low-speed, urban arena with the introduction of its proprietary Volvo City Safety feature.

This in-house developed technology, which promises to prevent or lessen the severity of collisions at low speeds, thus reducing the risk of personal injuries and damage to vehicles, recently received the prestigious American ''Traffic Safety Achievement Award'' at the World Traffic Safety Symposium in New York.

This innovative product was competing against various other recent traffic-safety developments at this symposium organized at the New York International Auto show.

The panel of experts comprising traffic safety specialists from institutions such as the Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), awarded the title to Volvo after its City Safety feature impressed them with its potential to reduce injuries and fatalities on the roads.

City Safety is yet another example of Volvo's aim to utilise real world traffic situations to develop solutions to prevent accidents," said Jonas Ekmark, head of preventive safety at the Volvo Cars Safety Centre,. '' It is extremely gratifying that we are now being acknowledged with this prestigious award''.

The usefulness of this feature can be gauged from the fact that it addresses the problem of low-speed collisions, which constitute a majority of car accidents around the world. In fact, as much as 75 per cent of all collisions are at speeds less than 30 km/h (18 mph), where in half the cases the driver doesn't brake at all.