Volvo: 100% safe car by 2020

With all the talk of terrorism, Avian flu, and mid-air plane crashes, it's always important to step back and remind ourselves that auto accidents are one of the most likely causes of death in this country and around the world, and that improving car safety is one of the easiest ways to increase life expectancy.

Volvo, a company legendary for its efforts in attempting to make cars safer (they invented the three-point seatbelt and side-impact airbags, after all), has now said it wants to eliminate auto injuries altogether by 2020. No, you won't be able to pull a Thelma and Louise and drive your car off a cliff or ride it into the ocean and expect to come out of it unscathed, but for almost all road accidents, Volvo's working to end fatalities and injuries... or prevent the accidents before they happen.

To reach this goal, Volvo's taking a broad approach the issue. Automatic braking systems and other computerized equipment that intervenes when a driver has lost control is being developed to help mitigate injuries: Reducing the average car's speed by about 10 miles per hour before a crash would halve the fatality rate, says Claes Tingvall, head of the Swedish road administration's traffic safety division. A complex collection of radar and sonar systems will maintain constant awareness of what's around the car at all times, letting it react in an instant if, say, a driver suddenly swerves into your lane. (Naturally, it would help if all the cars on the road have the same technology installed.)

Just as much of Volvo's research takes place in the test lab, simulating hundreds of crashes with test dummies and figuring out how best to engineer a car to crumple in just the right way so the driver and passengers aren't injured if an accident does occur. Auto-tightening seatbelts and airbags are additional, crucial aids, making sure the driver stays in one place and surrounded by something soft instead of steel.

Think Volvo can do it in 12 short years? As Wired notes in its analysis, that's but a heartbeat in the automotive world.