Volvo Wants Uncrashable Car by 2020

We’ve written before about technologies being developed to help cars avoid collisions, but now Volvo wants to build and sell a hyper-safe uncrashable vehicle by 2020.

Known for its long safety record, Volvo was the brand behind such innovations as side-impact air bags, crumple zones, the three-point seat belt and rear-facing child seats, as well as more recent introductions like frontal crash warnings and blind spot sensors. Now the carmaker wants to extend its safety legacy by creating what amounts to an invisible bumper — a sonar shell that surrounds the vehicle and feeds information to a central computer. If the car senses a threat, it can take control of the vehicle and, where human error might cause an accident, pilot the car either to safety or at least a less-devastating impact.

According to Volvo, reducing a car’s pre-impact speed by even 9 mph would reduce road deaths by half.

Volvo’s 2020 Vision: The Injury-Proof Car (The New York Times)