Volvo Establishes Safety Research Centre in China

Swedish Firm Pledges to Make Chinas Roads Safer Think Volvo and the first thing that comes to mind for most people is safety. Its products are stereotypically known for their boxiness and practicality, but its usually the issue of safety that strikes a chord with the masses.

Still, Volvo has been chipping away at its staid image. Todays Volvos are attractive, powerful machines, a bright beacon of Scandinavian luxury on an otherwise monochromatic German-influenced European backdrop. For proof, look no further than this years SEMA show, where Volvo presented five radical show cars: three different C30s tweaked by a variety of tuners, a hot-rod and a rally-style classic Amazon Wagon, all of which made the Volvo stand amongst the most visited at the event. Despite the specialty auto show, and the soon-to-arrive C30 and S80, its back to basics for Volvo, as its primary focus returns to safety.

For the general part, most manufactures treat vehicle safety with regards to design, testing their safety in crash tests against fixed, deformable and moving objects. Volvo does all of these things - including crash-testing their cars and SUVs against a mountain face, rear ending them, dropping them upside down from heights and more - but it also looks at uncontrolled collisions that happen outside of the lab. Since the early 1970s, Volvo established Traffic Accident Research Centers that collect data from these real world crashes. Currently Volvo has three different labs, located in Göteborg, Sweden, California in the States, and Bangkok, Thailand; the brand has just announced that it will be building a fourth in China.

Volvo chose China as opposed to mainland Europe or South America, as the Asian country has a large population as well as a booming automobile industry. Another factor is that the rules and regulations that govern Chinese roadways are much different than those of Europe or America, giving researchers greater insight into the road system and driving characteristics of this nation. In 2003, there were roughly 110,000 traffic fatalities in China alone; the most recent statistic, taken in 2006, shows that the figure has dipped to 100,000 deaths. Though this is a definite improvement, its still a number thats far too high, and something Volvo feels it can improve on.

"We must gain more knowledge about the increasingly intensive Chinese traffic environment to ensure that our high-tech systems function optimally even there", says P-O Boström, Director of Traffic Safety, AB Volvo. "The foundation of Volvos safety approach is that we should give all our customers the same high safety level, no matter which country they happen to be in."

The brand hopes that by monitoring accident cases on a local scale, the information gathered can help design safer vehicles. Volvo says that without the Traffic Accident Research Center many of its passive safety systems, such as SIPS (Side Impact Protection System), built-in child safety protection features (e.g. integrated rear booster seat), deformable steering wheels and ESP stability control wouldnt be as effective as they are today.