Tuesday, 28 February 2012

3-Point Safety Belt Standard

 Assalamualaikum and greetings to all readers...
 This time is about 3-Point Sfety Belt Standard
 Enjoy...
Two-point belt not safe enough 
During the latter half of the 1950s, Volvo developed a number of related solutions, all intended to prevent the occupant's impact with the car's interior components or to lessen the severity of the consequences of such impacts in a collision: collapsible steering column, padded dashboard and attachment points for diagonal two-point belts in the front seats. Volvo had already been equipping its cars with standard-fit anchorages for two-point front safety belts back in 1957, but the so-called "diagonal belt" did not have the required potential for developing into the safe solution for which Volvo was aiming.
The reason was that the belt buckle was positioned at the height of the occupant's ribcage. This positioning meant that the buckle damaged the body's soft organs instead of protecting them. Volvo president Engellau also had family experience of traffic fatalities. A relative had died in a road accident owing among other things to shortcomings in the two-point belt.
 He therefore gave Bohlin the brief to develop a better alternative. Bohlin's solution: simple perfection Bohlin soon realised that both the upper and lower body had to be properly secured in place, with one belt across the chest and another across the hips. His biggest challenge was to create a solution that was both simple to use and effective since the belt had to be able to be put on using just one hand. In 1958 his work resulted in a patent application for Nils Bohlin's three-point belt. What Bohlin integrated into his design, and which he regarded as most important for a car safety belt, were four golden rules: the belt consisted of both a hip or lap belt and also a diagonal belt across the upper body, which was positioned correctly from the physiological viewpoint. That is to say across the pelvis and the ribcage, and attached at a low anchorage point beside the seat. The belt geometry formed a "V" with the peak pointing down towards the floor. In addition, the belt stayed in position and did not move when it was under load. This is the crucial difference between the effective V-shaped belt according to Bohlin's design and the previous three-point design of Y-type (Griswold). Bohlin's belt was in fact an effective demonstration of geometrical perfection rather than a cutting-edge innovation. The solution and the benefits of the three-point design soon spread throughout the world since Volvo immediately made Bohlin's patent available to all car makers.
 Volvo first with 3-point belt as standard In 1959, the patented three-point safety belt was introduced in the Volvo Amazon (120) and PV 544 on the Nordic markets. Volvo thus became the first car maker in the world to equip its cars with safety belts as standard. Owing to the two-point belt's relatively poor protective ability and the fact that it was perceived as awkward, customers initially also resisted Volvo's three-point safety belt. Although it was easy to use and both comfortable and effective from the protection viewpoint, it was met with a certain degree of scepticism. Ahead of the launch of the three-point belt in Volvo's cars on markets worldwide, a series of sled tests and trial impacts were first carried out on all the safety belt models available at the time. The results were crystal-clear: Volvo's three-point belt provided by far the best level of protection for the car's occupants. Backed by these results, in 1963 Volvo introduced the three-point safety belt in the USA and on other markets where it was not yet fitted. This meant that all Volvo cars leaving the factory were now fitted as standard with the three-point safety belt in the front seats.

Taken from http://www.volvocars.com/intl/top/about/news-events/pages/default.aspx?itemid=34 

Friday, 24 February 2012

Volvo Safety Concept Car

Assalamualaikum wbt and greetings for all who read this post...
Just like the title,now we will talk about Volvo Safety Concept Car that been introduce by Volvo in year 2001.Do youself a favor to read it.

  Taken from http://driveandstayalive.com/articles%20and%20topics/test%20drives/td-volvo-scc.htm

 How many times have you heard of men behaving like a child with a new toy? Well… guilty as charged, your Honor! – Volvo’s new ‘Safety Concept Car’ – bemused not only by the nature of some of the remarkable features, but also by their sheer quantity. “Giving drivers the best possible view is what this car is all about,” says Dan Johnston, a veteran of thirty-five years working for Volvo, USA. “When you get into it, sensors detect where your eyes are, then the car molds itself around you. The floor, the pedals, the seat height, the steering wheel and even the center console all move until the car senses that you are in the best possible position.” Before I can say ‘Really?’ it happens; and it feels delightfully weird – but it seems more like being in a space ship than a dentist’s chair. I’ve paid good money in the past for custom-tailored suits that didn’t fit me as well as this Volvo does. Dan draws my attention to the pillars that hold up the roof and – usually – hold the windows in place. The so-called ‘A Pillars,’ at either side of the windshield, are transparent – made of a crisscross metal framework filled with Plexiglas or some such substance. This will allow drivers at intersections a much better view to either side, especially in connection with bicyclists and motorcyclists, many hundreds of whom have been killed over the years by unthinking or unseeing drivers pulling out of a drive or a side street in front of them. “Now look over your shoulder,” says Dan. No matter how hi-tech the see-through front pillars are, the ‘B Pillars’ – between the front doors and the rear doors – are much more startling. They are not there! There is no metal column between the glass of the front side-windows and the rear side-windows. Instead, the solid frame, which is essential to help hold up the roof in the event of a rollover-type crash, is built into the outside edge of each of the front seats, several inches inboard from the windows, and it is curved inwards, allowing the driver a remarkable, uninterrupted view when checking over his shoulder. And this, of course, is another reason that the controls move to the driver rather than the other way around; the edge of the seat is part of the safety frame, so it isn’t going anywhere. The difference in the view available when looking over one's shoulder into the driver's B-pillar blind spot (The red car is the SCC, the silver car is any other!) Am I impressed so far? Suffice it to say that the see-through ‘A Pillars’ and the see-around ‘B Pillars’ would easily be reason enough for me to buy this car. Safe driving – whether it be of the modest but very worthwhile standard known as ‘defensive driving,’ or of the full-blown police ‘advanced’ standard, which requires a total of several hundred hours of specialist training – depends to a huge extent on precisely what can be seen at any given moment, and then using every ounce of that visual information to interpret both the road ahead and the actions of all other road users. That is why you will never see a truly good driver with a string of beads, or a crucifix, or an air-freshener-Christmas-tree-thingy dangling from their interior mirror. Nothing is allowed to block any part of the view of a wise driver, let alone stuff that swings around in a distracting, eye-catching way. Maximum view at all times is vital and the Volvo SCC delivers it in truckloads. So much for the revolutionary, outstanding views afforded to drivers by the design of the ‘A-’ and ‘B-Pillars’ on the SCC and yet in many ways these are seemingly the two most straightforward innovations. Let’s look at some other aspects. Imagine yourself walking towards your car in the middle of a deserted parking lot at night. Want to know whether there is a thug lying in wait inside the car? Just press a button on the remote control; sensors will pick up the heartbeat of anybody in the vehicle and warn you well before you get there. If all is well, you get into the vehicle and start the engine, but you do it courtesy of your fingerprint; gone are the days of a key. Okay, so now you are safely inside and heading for home, in the dark. Let’s say that after you leave behind the busy intersections in town, the road has lots of curves and steep grades. Press a button: up pops an infrared night-vision screen to extend your view beyond the range of the headlights. This isn’t a first; several makes of car around the world already have this feature, but the Volvo doesn’t just have passive infrared. A close look at the headlight array, on the front of the car, shows three small fresnel lenses inside each headlight, and these are fed via fiber optic cables. Apart from providing normal headlight illumination, these lenses do something quite, quite different. When you drive slowly, the beam of light automatically brightens and widens, nearer your car, to help you with town driving situations. On the open road, as you build up speed, the beam lengthens to give you better distance vision. But then – get this – when you drive around tight curves and corners, part of the beam swings left or right as you start to turn the wheel so that you can actually see around the curve in advance, and not just the portion of it that you happen to be on at that moment. This car has cameras, too; one to replace the interior rear-view mirror if you are carrying too much luggage in the back and you block your own view out of the rear window; one to show you the ground directly behind the car when you are backing up; and one – especially for frustrated moms (and dads) – to show you the kids in the back seat, so that you can yell at them without turning your eyes away from the road! Alarms warn the driver if he signals to change lane while another vehicle is in the blindspot These cameras, and their two viewing screens, are good but again not revolutionary. Once more, it is the adjacent technology that breaks new ground – the car has sensors. Yes, there is one to tell you whether you are driving too close to the car ahead, but there are sensors fixed to each of the side mirrors as well, and these trigger warning lights if there is another vehicle on either side of your car, in a rear blind spot. That’s great; it’s a useful and very visible warning, but the next bit is even better: If you fail to see the warning lights and you intend, say, to change lanes to pass a vehicle ahead, then the moment you switch on your indicator as though you were going to pull across in front of the car in your blind spot, the Volvo lets you know that this is a bad idea. And, believe me, it really does let you know; I learn this first-hand during a pre-arranged situation on the test drive. By now, one of the Swedish engineers is in the car with me. She can’t resist grinning and commenting at my reaction: “What is this ‘Bloody Hell!’ that you English say?” The other new type of sensor does something rather different. The staff at Volvo – in their remarkable, new, eighty-million US-dollar safety research center – are well aware of all of the major causes of fatal road crashes around the world, one of which is unintentionally drifting from one lane to another or even drifting right off the road. Obviously, this is usually linked to drowsiness or just plain bad concentration. But if you attempt to do a gradual drift between lanes (or head, accidentally, off the road altogether) in the Volvo SCC, and you haven’t given a signal to show that you intend to move sideways, then it’s time to wake up. Think about wartime submarine movies when a klaxon sounds and a stressed voice shouts ‘Dive, dive, dive!’ Well, alright… it’s not quite like that, but believe me, the noisy result would encourage a drowsy driver to wake up rather swiftly. What else is there? Let’s just pause for thought. Whenever car manufacturers talk about better safety, we all tend to think of vehicle occupants, but of course it is often the people on the outside that are most at risk: pedestrians die even when struck at relatively low-speeds. But whenever you hear talk of someone being knocked down by a car it is a misnomer. People hit by cars are almost always knocked upwards, not down. Their legs are swept out from underneath them by the front bumper, and the unfortunate person’s head usually then hits the windshield. And that alone often kills them. This is why windshield wiper hubs are now located below the level of the hood – to stop them punching a hole in the skull of some poor unfortunate passer-by. But now, Volvo – and their relatively new owner’s, Ford – are jointly working on this problem. The Volvo SCC is fitted with a ‘cowl’ airbag, between the rear edge of the hood and the windshield. The bag triggers in the event of a relevant type of collision on the front bumper and cushions the head of a pedestrian or bicyclist from hitting the glass. Ford, on the other hand, are working on the concept of an over-the-hood airbag which will trigger at the very front of the car a split second before a collision with a pedestrian, to protect the person from the front metalwork of the vehicle. Stephen Rouhana, who leads the Advanced Occupant Protection group at Ford, tells me of the difficulties of setting sensors so that they will detect a pedestrian’s legs but will not fire if, for example, the car hits a cardboard box. He is most excited, though, about the new, easy-fit four-point seat belts fitted to the Volvo SCC. It was, after all, Volvo that invented three-point seatbelts, back in 1958. It can be no great surprise that the car manufacturer that has effectively always led the world in safety now shocks even the informed with an incredible display of engineering and innovation on the concept car. Whether Ford bought Volvo, three years ago, purely for diversification, or whether they bought the marque in order to lift themselves up to the forefront of vehicular safety is academic, but every car manufacturer in the world has much to learn from these Swedes. Oh, and the looks? Volvos used to attract much criticism years ago that they were ugly – those days have long since gone. The current models from the Volvo stable are among some of the most attractive family cars and executive cars on the road. Who could criticize the looks (or performance) of the C70, for example. So now you can have the best of both worlds, supreme safety and a good-looking car. The first ever Volvo SUV is coming out this fall (2002), too, and I can’t wait.

Tuesday, 21 February 2012

Safety Milestones - Volvo

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_Cars

Assalamualaikum wbt n Greetings for readers. We can see the cronology of Safety Features that been innovated by Volvo since 1944 until 2010. The details of each safety features can be read on next post. ENJOY =)


Safety milestones


  • 1944 Safety cage
  • 1944 Laminated windscreen
  • 1957 Anchor points for 2–point safety belts front
  • 1958 Anchor points for 2–point safety belts rear
  • 1959 3–point front safety belts standard
  • 1964 First rearward–facing child safety seat prototype tested
  • 1966 Crumple zones front and rear
  • 1966 Safety door–locks
  • 1969 Inertia reel safety belts
  • 1971 Reminder safety belt
  • 1972 3–point safety belts – rear
  • 1972 Rearward–facing child safety seat
  • 1974 Multistage impact absorbing steering column
  • 1974 Bulb integrity sensor
  • 1975 Braking system with stepped bore master cylinder
  • 1978 Child safety booster cushion
  • 1982 "Anti–submarining" protection
  • 1986 Three–point safety belt centre rear seat
  • 1990 Integrated child safety cushion in centre rear seat
  • 1991 Side Impact Protection System (SIPS)
  • 1991 Automatic height adjusting safety belt
  • 1992 Reinforced rear seats in estate models
  • 1995 Integrated child safety cushion outer rear seats
  • 1997 ROPS – Roll Over Protection System (C70)
  • 1998 WHIPS – Whiplash Protection System
  • 1998 IC – Inflatable Curtain
  • 2001 SCC – Volvo Safety Concept Car
  • 2002 RSC – Roll Stability Control
  • 2003 New Front Structure called Volvo Intelligent Vehicle Architecture (VIVA, S40, V50)
  • 2003 Rear seat belt reminders (in S40 and V50)
  • 2003 IDIS – Intelligent Driver Information System (in S40 and V50)
  • 2003 Inauguration of Volvo's Traffic Accident Research Team in Bangkok
  • 2004 BLIS – Blind Spot Information System (in S40 and V50)
  • 2005 Introduction of DMIC (Door Mounted Inflatable Curtain, new Volvo C70)
  • 2006 PCC – Personal Car Communicator (S80)
  • 2006 CWBS – Collision Warning with Brake Support (S80)
  • 2007 PPB – Power Park Brake (S80)
  • 2007 DAC – Driver Alert Control (V70, XC70)
  • 2009 City Safety – Automatically stop car at speeds below 19 mph (31 km/h) if obstruction is detected in front of car (XC60)
  • 2010 Pedestrian Detection with auto brake (New S60)

Thursday, 16 February 2012

Safety Features By Volvo Part 1

Taken from http://www.gizmag.com/go/4448/

Volvo experimenting with new safety features
Volvo experimenting with new safety features
Image Gallery (5 images)
August 18 2005 Volvo Cars’ most recent contribution to road safety is an experimental car equipped with a breathalyser lock integrated into the driver's seat belt clasp. Volvo Cars is also experimenting with a special ignition key that regulates the car’s top speed. The experimental technology requires the driver to perform a two-step safety check before the engine will start. The driver must first blow into the built-in breathalyser lock and the driver must also fasten the seat belt. When the breathalyser detects alcohol or if the driver does not fasten the seat belt, the engine will not start. The breathalyser will illuminate red when it positively detects alcohol, and the breathalyser will illuminate green when it does not detect alcohol.
“We know that a very large proportion of car crashes resulting in serious injuries or fatalities are caused by drivers under the influence of alcohol. According to the EU Commission, about 10,000 people a year die in alcohol-related road accidents on European roads.
"Many car accidents also result in serious personal injuries because drivers and passengers fail to wear their seat belts. That is why we are also working on the development of a breathalyser lock. With our multi-lock technology, the aim is to try to prevent these accidents,” says Ingrid Skogsmo, head of the safety centre at the Volvo Car Corporation.
International statistics also show that youngsters are clearly over-represented in car accidents. The risk of 18 to 25 year olds being involved in an accident is more than twice that of people aged between 26 and 50, according to EU statistics. The accidents often result from high speed combined with inadequate experience.
The special ignition key can be programmed to limit the car’s speed to a predetermined limit such as 90km/h.
The breathalyser lock, the seat belt lock and the speed-limiting ignition key are the three safety features, which in effect, comprise a Volvo multi-lock system.
“Using our special ignition key, we can easily program the car so it cannot exceed 90km/h, for instance. This gives parents an added measure of security when they lend their cars to their children with fresh driving licences. It can be a source of great security to know that the car cannot exceed a pre-determined speed such as 90km/h. This is also a technology that lends itself to implementation in different types of commercial traffic. A distribution truck that never leaves the urban area, for instance, never needs to exceed 70km/h,” says Skogsmo.
The special ignition key can be pre-programmed to any speed limit. In certain European countries, there is already a “youth licence” whereby the driver is not allowed to exceed 90km/h for a pre-determined period, indicated by a “90” sign on the car. With the speed key, implementation of this rule would be easier to ensure.
Volvo Cars has developed its multi-lock system to raise interest in traffic safety among the general public and among decision-makers. In Volvo’s version, the technique is very simple to use since the breathalyser lock is attached to the seat belt itself.
“This experimental car is an important step for us in evaluating the possibility to offer multi-lock technology to all our car customers,” explains Skogsmo.