City Safety garners German award

City Safety garners German award

February 2009

Volvo Cars has been honoured with the prestigious Paul Pietsch Award 2009 for its innovative low-speed collision avoidance system, City Safety, which is fitted as standard to the new Volvo XC60.

Stephen Odell, president and CEO of Volvo Car Corporation, accepted the award from German magazine "auto motor und sport" in Stuttgart.
"We are proud to receive this award because it stands for technical developments which represent a lasting change in the automotive world. The further development of automotive safety has been of great significance to Volvo for decades and is an important pillar of our corporate philosophy," he said.

"We will not lessen our dedication in this sector because we want to maintain our leading position among automobile manufacturers worldwide when it comes to safety in the future as well," emphasised Odell.

The editor-in-chief of "auto motor und sport", Bernd Ostmann, pointed out the importance of the new development during the award ceremony.

"The jury of the Paul Pietsch Award regards Volvo's City Safety, to be a groundbreaking system which will make it possible to substantially reduce inner city accident figures. The current version of City Safety has as its primary aim the prevention of rear end collisions between cars. Another positive aspect was that this system is being offered as a standard feature in every Volvo XC60," he said.

City Safety active at speeds up to 30 km/h
Volvo's City Safety system provides more safety especially in inner city traffic and in typical stop-and-go situations, and is active at speeds up to 30 km/h. It uses an optical camera and laser sensor for the continuous monitoring of the traffic.
If the relative speed between the two vehicles is less than 15 km/h, a collision is avoided completely. In the range between 15 and 30 km/h, the first priority is to reduce the collision speed as far as possible, minimising the consequences of the accident.

Safety is further enhanced by the interaction of the system, which functions both day and night, with the electronic management devices for the airbags and adaptive belt force limiters.

Pedestrian protection is coming
Volvo's commitment to safety innovation continues with its pedestrian protection system, recently introduced at the presentation of the Volvo S60 Concept car in Detroit. Using a radar and advanced camera technology, this groundbreaking system is expected to make a major contribution to accident prevention when it is launched on the new Volvo S60 in 2010.

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