Volvo's 2020 vision: The injury-proof car

By Sarah Edmonds

GOTHENBURG, Sweden (Reuters) - The destruction of the orange sedan with its slapdash paintwork may have been intentional but it was far from wanton. It was all part of Volvo's bid to create an injury-proof car by 2020.

While that vehicle of the future may lack the self-awareness of the crime-fighting Trans Am in 1980s TV series Knight Rider, experts say it will be able to steer, brake and find out about the road ahead from within a vast electronic bumper.

And if all goes according to plan, its driver and passengers will escape even the most serious crash unhurt.

Volvo is far from the only player in what Claes Tingvall, the Swedish road administration's head of traffic safety, calls the biggest revolution in the auto industry since the seatbelt.

Automakers, parts suppliers, governments and global agencies from the United Nations to the OECD are all looking at ways to relegate to memory the roughly 1.2 million deaths and 50 million injuries caused by motor vehicle crashes each year.

But in what some analysts see as a bid to hold its lead in consumer perceptions of safety, the Swedish carmaker now owned by Ford is the first to set a target date to eliminate death and injury in its cars.

"I think if you look into the future, we as a community will not accept that we have injuries," said Jan Ivarsson, leader of the Volvo safety team with specialists in everything from biomechanics to engineering to behavioral science.

"We have other things that are important in life."

While Volvo is working on pedestrian safety as well, the 2020 goal centers on those inside its vehicles.

Tingvall, who is a force behind the Swedish government's own plan to stop traffic deaths through better infrastructure, doubts Volvo's target is fully achievable but said even a tenfold reduction in injury rates would yield dramatic benefits.

Borrowing principles from industries like aviation, the matrix of systems Volvo and other carmakers are working on will interact to start crash prevention and mitigation hours, rather than milliseconds, before impact.

CREATIVE DESTRUCTION

Which brings us back to the orange sedan, its nose crushed pug-small after powering down a tunnel at 35 miles an hour into an 850-tonne steel-encased block, at what analysts say is one of the most advanced crash-test centers in the world.

The Gothenburg complex's moveable crash block and two 150-metre tunnels, including the only rotating test tunnel in the industry, allow Volvo to simulate everything from a head-on smash into a bus stop to a 90-degree vehicle-to-vehicle impact.

The rotating tunnel can also reverse and shoot a car outside, into the rock face or the pond behind the centre.