Volvo Car UK joins road safety experts and MPs to set blueprint in the UK for safer roads over next 10 years.
Road safety experts, MPs and Volvo's most senior safety engineer meet today (11 May) to launch the United Nations' Decade of Action for Road Safety plan in Britain, which aims to reduce the horrific number of deaths on the road both in the UK and around the world.
Every year 1.3 million people are killed on the world's roads with 26,912 killed or seriously injured in the UK alone. Worldwide road crashes kill more people than Malaria and in addition, 50 million people are injured with many disabled as a result. Annual deaths are forecast to rise to 1.9 million by 2020.
Because road crashes are preventable, the UN sees the issue as one of huge urgency and its Decade of Action for Road Safety initiative will be rolled out across the world to try to curb the shocking death toll rates that globally are increasing year on year.
Around the UK, the UN will look for support from local authorities, schools, the car industry and of course motorists themselves, to be a part of the solution. The motoring industry has already radically improved safety in new cars over the last decade, with manufacturers such as Volvo, who have been heavily involved in the Decade of Action for Road Safety initiative, taking the lead and developing new technology to make cars safer than ever before.
For Volvo safety has been a key priority for three decades and in 2008, Volvo launched a unique goal in that ‘By 2020, nobody shall be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo' and to achieve it has developed technology including Pedestrian Detection and City Safety.
Pedestrian Detection uses a mixture of laser, radar and camera technology, so that the vehicle can recognise a human being above 80cm tall or a vehicle ahead and will brake the vehicle automatically if it calculates an impending impact. City Safety reacts if the vehicle in front is at a standstill, or moving in the same direction as one's own car to prevent rear end impacts. In certain situations, a collision may be avoided if the speed difference between the two vehicles is below 21mph. The technology is active at all times.
Thomas Broberg, senior safety engineer at Volvo Cars represented the motor industry at the launch of the UN initiative and said: "Safety has always been a key feature when Volvo designs and builds a car and features such as Pedestrian Detection have been developed so that the car works with the driver to help prevent and avoid accidents."
