Safer Volvo cars for drunkards by 2020?
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Safer Volvo cars for drunkards by 2020?
https://youtu.be/U7jaWDMf9t4 (VIDEO: Volvo 360c – Mini Bedroom on the Road / Self Driving Luxury Car | Volvo Self Driving Car)
PORT MORESBY: Volvo is working on a car sensor technology to detect and identify drunkards so as to prevent road accidents.
The technology could be ready for use in autonomous cars as early as next year.
Drunk driving is a road safety hazard in all countries, including Papua New Guinea.
Read on a Reuters report for more details and information:
Safety first: Volvo to add in-car sensors to prevent drunk driving
TECH NEWS
Thursday, 21 Mar 2019
2:30 PM MYT
by esha vaish
A crash test of a Volvo XC 90 vehicle is presented at the Volvo Cars Safety Center in Gothenburg, Sweden. — TT News Agency/Bjorn Larsson Rosvall/Reuters |
The safety features, detailed at a briefing in Gothenburg on March 20 which fleshed out plans outlined earlier this month, mark another step by Volvo towards its pledge to eliminate passenger fatalities.
Development of technology that would support such manoeuvres has accelerated in the past year as the industry increasingly focuses on autonomous cars.
Volvo is building a driverless highway autopilot car with Swedish autoparts maker Veoneer as it aims to achieve a third of its sales from self-driving cars by 2025.
But CEO Hakan Samuelsson told Reuters it would take another 5 to 10 years before there was a mass takeup of such vehicles, creating a viable market to sell cars with additional safety features such as camera monitoring in the meantime.
"These active safety technologies are there from 2021... smart sensors, smart speed limiters, smart distraction sensors, smart intoxication sensors. That will come," he added.
Head of R&D Henrik Green said cameras will be installed on all Volvo models built on its SPA2 platform for larger cars, starting from the XC90 SUV in the early part of the next decade, before being added to smaller cars built on its CMA platform.
Volvo said intervention if the driver is found to be drunk, tired or distracted by checking a mobile phone – among the biggest factors in accidents – could involve limiting the car's speed, alerting the Volvo on Call assistance service, or slowing down and parking the car.
The Geely-owned automaker, which in the 1950s was the first carmaker to introduce the three-point seatbelt, said on March 4 it would introduce a 180 km per hour speed limit on new vehicles.
Samuelsson said that while the strategies meant Volvo might lose some customers keen on high speeds, it also opened opportunities to win parents who wanted to buy the safest car to carry their children.
"It would be easy to say that people can do whatever they like but we feel we have a responsibility to do this. Maybe people will see us as 'Big Brother', but if we save some lives then it's worth it," he told journalists.
Volvo also said it would introduce Care Key on cars from 2021, allowing buyers to set speed limits, and that it was talking to insurers to offer better terms for users of these safety features. – Reuters/The Star
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