Thursday, 19 November 2015

Volvo unveils Concept 26

Volvo Cars’ ongoing research into autonomous driving has confirmed what we all know - that the daily commute is taking the joy out of driving. It is during the commute and on long motorway trips that people are most willing to delegate the act of driving to their car.

‘In Europe, ESC has been mandatory since 2012 and we’ve seenfirst-hand how effective it can be in preventing the driver from losing controlin a skid,’ said Andrew Miller, chief technical officer at Thatcham Researchand president of Euro NCAP.

ESC works by automatically comparing the steering actionscarried out by the driver to what the vehicle is actually doing. If the ESCsenses that the vehicle is veering from the required course – a skid – itautomatically brakes selected wheels to bring the car back into line.

A study in 2007 for the UK Department for Transport byLoughborough University showed that in the UK, vehicles equipped withElectronic Stability Control (ESC) were 25% less likely to be involved in afatal accident than those without it. Meaning that if every vehicle onthe road was fitted with ESC, it would equate to approximately 380 fewerfatal accidents each year.

The study concluded that ESC was especially effective inhelping to prevent crashes that involved a vehicle skidding or overturning,with the potential to reduce serious accidents like this by up to 59%. Thesecompelling statistics, alongside other European wide studies, were instrumentalin helping to persuade European legislators to take action in 2012 and mandateESC across Europe.

Overall fatalities on UK roads are now 45% lower than adecade earlier in 2014, despite an increase in the number of vehicles on theroad and whilst this cannot be attributable to any single factor, it is likelythat we are seeing the benefits of a range of additional safety technologiesincluding ESC and more recently Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB).

‘There can be no argument with the benefits of ElectronicStability Control and we think it’s high time that all drivers world-wide hadaccess to this life saving technology. We are delighted to be a partner of theStop The Crash campaign and welcome this latest announcement from Brazil,’added Andrew Miller.