Narrator: In 1937, there were
30.8 motor-vehicle-related deaths
per 100,000 people in the United States.
By 2019, that number decreased
to 11.9 per 100,000.
But what if it could be zero?
Volvo's Safety Center,
opened in 2000 in Gothenburg, Sweden,
believes it has the tools to reach that goal.
The $81 million state-of-the-art facility
is host to an average of two crash tests every day
and includes a pivoting, rotating crash track,
a crane that drops vehicles from 98 feet in the air,
and an outdoor space
for rollover and runoff accident simulations.
Since its inception in 1927,
Volvo has been synonymous with safety.
It was a Volvo engineer, Nils Bohlin, who in 1959
introduced the first three-point safety belt,
an invention that the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration estimates
saved 329,715 lives
between 1960 and 2012.
Volvo also introduced the first
rear-facing child safety seat in 1972,
and in 1994, it introduced
the world's first side-impact airbags.
Volvo has a reputation for safety,
and in my experience I think it's well deserved.
Volvo is independently working to identify problems,
safety problems that need to be addressed,
coming up with solutions,
and then keeping those solutions
in their design process.
Narrator: The Safety Center has two
primary test tracks.
One is 354 feet long,
and the other 505 feet long.
The shorter track is movable
and can be set at any angle
between 0 and 90 degrees
to allow for multicar tests
and tests at varying speeds and angles.
We can reconstruct more or less
any type of crash situation here in this lab.
So what we can do here
is that we can recreate a front-to-front crash,
a side crash,
or, as we have done and talked about,
also run-off-road type of crash
could be generated in this environment.
Narrator: Run-off-road crash tests are performed outside
and simulate an accident where the vehicle
leaves the road and is briefly airborne
before colliding with a ditch.
These tests are performed in conjunction
with the Robocoaster,
a robot that can be programmed to simulate
what happens to an occupant in a run-off-road crash.
Rollover crashes are also performed outside
using a hydraulic platform
that launches a vehicle into a rollover motion
at different heights and speeds.
One of the more shocking tests
done at the Safety Center is the crane drop,
in which a vehicle plummets towards the ground
from a height of 98 feet.
The test is performed so that emergency responders
can practice rescues from high-impact crashes
with the "jaws of life."
In order to accurately represent real people,
Volvo has a large variety of crash dummies
to replicate different sizes of men, women,
and small children.
Each test dummy is equipped with sensors
that notify researchers which parts
of a passenger's body would be safest
and which would be the most vulnerable in a crash.
Both the car and barriers are fitted with sensors
that record the entire chain of events in detail.
Jan: And we create a situation
with X-ray meters
sensing motion pattern and forces in the car.
We have extensive footage,
and that is done by adding extra capabilities,
light capabilities.
We can run cameras
with around 1,000 frames per second
to really understand the details of the crash.
And then we run it in this crash facility,
and we could generate the same type of crash
that we have seen out in field crashes.
Narrator: Field crashes that are studied
by the Volvo accident research team.
They have the task of understanding
what goes on in traffic.
Because if you start with
what technology is available,
you are limited to what's out there.
They will travel to accidents
within a reasonable driving distance from Gothenburg.
Reason for that is because
we want to know the time of day,
we want to know the road conditions,
and these things can shift.
If we have a accident collision
with injuries involved,
we will ask the permission
from the user or driver of the car
to get medical journal
from the hospital.
And then, with this knowledge,
we can go further down
and do in-depth studies of crash situations
that we find important for our customers.
How did this injury pattern occur,
why did this occur,
and how could we change the event?
What may be possible is that
people don't get seriously injured or killed.
And that may come about by a combination
of providing better protection
to people when crashes occur
as well as outfitting cars with systems
that help drivers avoid crashing,
or at least mitigate the conditions of the crash
that would have occurred otherwise.
Malin: Our ultimate goal is zero.
People are excellent drivers when they're at their best,
and then you have life.
Life can be hard.
So focus for us is not,
not so much the why,
but more the what can we do for you?
How can we help you be the best driver
you can possibly be in whatever situation you're in?
So there's a beginning to safety development,
but there is no end because it is a circle.
It goes on.