Ft. Myers Volvo S60 Will Come With Active Safety System On Next Model

"Up until now, we have focused on helping the driver avoid collisions with other vehicles. Now we are taking a giant step forward with a system that also boosts safety for unprotected road-users. New sensor technology also makes it possible to advance from 50 percent to full automatic braking power. To our knowledge, none of our competitors have made such progress in this area," explains Thomas Broberg, safety expert at Volvo Cars.

What Broberg is referring to, is the new safety system, known as Collision Warning with Full Auto Brake, that will be installed in the new FT. Myers Volvo S60 which will be coming out later this year. Volvo has been developing this system for 10 years, and have created a system that monitors the road ahead of the car, detecting objects by dual-mode radar, measuring the distance to them and then determining the type of object by video game recognition.

When the system sees a pedestrian in the path that the driver is going, the driver receives an audible warning together with a flashing light in the windscreens head-up display. This is meant to get the drivers attention so they would then press on the brake. If the driver doesnt respond to the warning and the system evaluates a collision is about to occur, the cars full braking power is activated automatically. Volvo is hoping that the preliminary warning will be enough for the driver to brake or maneuver away from the hazard and full automatic braking will only occur if the system recognizes an accident is about to occur.

This new technology will also be helpful when rear-end collisions are about to occur, since studies done by Volvo have indicated that half of all drivers who drive into another vehicle from behind do not brake prior to the collision.

Volvo has done studies that have shown most pedestrian incidents happen in busy cities during high traffic times when cars are traveling at speeds below 20kmh. Due to this finding, Broberg said "Our aim is that this new technology should help the driver avoid collisions with pedestrians at speeds below 20km/h. If the car is being driven faster, the aim is to reduce the impact speed as much as possible. In most cases, we can reduce the collision force by about 75 percent. By decreasing the speed of the vehicle from 50 km/h to 30 km/h it greatly reduces the severity of impact and improves survival rate of pedestrians involved in the accident.

Although, the Collision Warning with Full Auto Brake system will be beneficial in crowded areas, and will definitely be able to prevent many different accidents, there is one situation that this system wont be guaranteed to work. The system has a built in algorithm that wont list anything smaller than 80 centimeters long as a potential pedestrian, so when a mother is pushing a child in a stroller, it will identify the mother as important and not recognize the infant. Other than this factor, this system is quite a step up from previously designed systems. Before the Collision Warning with Full Auto Brake system designed for the FT. Myers Volvo S60, safety systems before this were primarily designed to protect against collisions with large objects that were primarily other cars, and the systems brakes would only operate at speeds up to 30 km/h that used a laser scanner eight meters ahead of the vehicle.

As of right now the 2010 Volvo 260 is the only car that features the collision Warning with Full Auto Brake system. Hopefully one day all cars will have built in safety systems like these so we can avoid many accidents that occur on our roads everyday.