The first phase, which began five years ago, has resulted in the “City Safety” technology introduced in Volvo’s 2010 XC60 SUV.  According to the promotion, “75 percent of all reported collisions occur at speeds of up to 29 km/h and half of these occur in city traffic.”  City Safety technology will help avoid or reduce the consequences of low speed collisions by determining through the use of infrared laser sensors whether the driver is approaching (from behind) a vehicle moving slower in the same direction.

 

If the driver doesn’t brake quickly enough, the City Safety technology automatically applies the brakes to either avoid the collision, which, it says, is possible if the speed difference between the two vehicles is below 14.5 km/h or reduce the impact, if the speed difference is between 14.5 and 29 km/h.  The interior restraint systems are also pre-prepared for activation to help reduce the risk of injury to the driver and the passengers. Bad weather can in-activate ‘City Safety’ in which case a ‘not active’ message is displayed.

 

Phase two—Collision Warning with Full Auto Brake and Pedestrian Detection—introduced on the S60 Concept Car for inclusion in Volvo’s new S60 mid-sized car in late 2010/early 2011 involves “a range of intelligent safety systems” to help the driver stay in control and avoid accidents.  Using a combination of radar and camera sensors this system offers adaptive cruise control and automatic hard braking to avoid or minimize a collision “instead of just pre-pumping the brakes.”

 

Phase three is still a research project but says Mr. Eugensson, “it is not something we [Volvo] can do on our own.”  This is because it envisions vehicles communicating with each other and the surrounding highway infrastructure to both exchange information about the traffic environment and to avoid crashes.

 

Creation of such an on road, active communication network—an ‘Intelligent Transportation System’—requires equipping all road-users with some sort of transponder.  A transponder is an electronic device used to wirelessly receive and transmit electrical signals.  Originally developed for attachment to objects that needed to be located, a transponder receives a signal, called an "interrogator" because it is ‘asking’ for information, to which it automatically responds by transmitting a radio wave at a predetermined frequency. Transponder technology is widely used today including in cell phones.

 

The vision of an Intelligent Transportation System, for now, offers the best hope for universal relief from the scourge of highway carnage.  It raises complex standardization issues, which certainly can be solved. An unpleasant consequence will be that an unaccountable government may use the technology to find out where everyone is located, all the time.