When Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin developed the three-point seatbelt in 1959, Volvo did something unusual: it made the patent available for other carmakers to use.
It’s become part of Volvo folklore, but it says a lot about the company’s attitude to safety. The seatbelt wasn’t treated simply as something that might help sell more Volvos; it could save lives, whoever built the car. Safety was being treated as a public right rather than simply a competitive advantage.
Stronger passenger cells, crumple zones, seatbelts and airbags were physical things designed to protect you when the worst happened. They’re still essential, but the definition of a safe car has changed enormously. Increasingly, the clever bit happens before the crash, with sensors and software watching the road, the driver and the people inside.
“Safety is who we are. For almost 100 years, we’ve been committed to protecting what matters most: you and your loved ones.” That’s how Åsa Haglund, head of the Volvo Cars Safety Centre, describes the company’s philosophy. And she’s clear that Volvo’s own target goes beyond simply meeting the rules: “We always develop our cars to meet the Volvo Cars Safety Standard. It goes above and beyond legal requirements and star ratings.”
Volvo has gathered an abundance of knowledge to inform its stringent approach to safety. Haglund says: “Our safety standard is based on decades of research and data, including insights from over 50,000 real-world accidents collected over the past 50 years. And we combine this with rigorous virtual and physical testing. This knowledge has shaped how we engineer our cars to be as safe as they are.”
Crash tests are hugely valuable, but accidents rarely happen in neat circumstances. People are different heights and weights, sit differently and collisions happen at different speeds and angles. Modern sensors and software give engineers far more information to work with.
The safety belt in the new Volvo EX60 is a good example of mechanical protection meeting the software age. The belt still looks reassuringly familiar, but the way it reacts can vary according to the person in the seat and the crash that’s unfolding. Haglund explains it in full: “The multi-adaptive safety belt is a safety innovation that has evolved over time. It’s a world-first – introduced in the EX60 – and already award-winning.
“It offers smarter, more personalised protection by adapting to the size, body shape and seating position of the people in the front seats. It can tell the speed and direction of a crash and adjust the tension of the belt accordingly.
“And as we gather more insights, the belt will be able to adapt to new situations and improve how it responds even further.”
So, can a car actually learn to protect you? Real-world information from cars on the road, accident research and testing can feed back into the engineering process, while a car’s software can be remotely updated to receive improvements throughout its use. Safety is no longer frozen on the day a car leaves the factory.
The shift is just as dramatic in accident prevention. The EX60’s Driver Understanding System can recognise when attention starts to drift through tiredness or distraction and offer support; if necessary, Volvo says it can bring the car safely to a stop. Cabin and exterior sensors also keep watch on what’s happening inside and around the car.
Håkan Samuelsson, Volvo Cars’ CEO, describes the thinking in refreshingly practical terms. “Look at how people are still being killed – running off the road after falling asleep, for example, or in particular types of junction collision – then develop technology designed to stop those situations happening. Keep attacking the causes of serious accidents one by one,” he says.
There are limits, though, and I’m glad Volvo acknowledges them. Samuelsson is pragmatic about autonomous driving and says that today’s systems remain supervised, with responsibility staying with the driver. A car may be getting better at reading the road, but it doesn’t mean we can stop doing so ourselves.
For me, that gets to the heart of how car safety is changing. Ideally, you’ll hardly notice the best new technology. It’s the car spotting that your concentration has slipped, understanding the traffic ahead, knowing more about the person behind the seatbelt and preparing its response before you’ve realised there’s a problem.
The old physical fundamentals haven’t disappeared. The EX60 still uses a safety cage strengthened with boron steel, sophisticated restraints and a reinforced battery integrated into the floor. Software hasn’t replaced crumple zones; it’s added another protective layer around them.
Nearly seven decades after the three-point seatbelt, cars can understand far more about an accident before, during and after it happens. They can’t remove risk or make human judgment irrelevant, but they can learn from a growing body of information and become better at helping us avoid our mistakes.
The three-point seatbelt was brilliant partly because it made safety so simple. The technology protecting us now is vastly more complicated. The clever part will be making sure it feels just as reassuringly simple from the driver’s seat.
Freedom to move. Electric
Find out more about the fully electric Volvo EX60
Range and charge time based on P12 battery using 350kw chargers mostly found on major arterial routes. These figures may not reflect real life driving results, which will depend upon a number of factors including cold weather and different battery options. Preliminary data.
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Safety features complement safe driving practices. Ultimately the driver is responsible for the safe operation of the vehicle at all times.
