How important is safety to you?

[June]

I am hoping to give you food for thought. Last month i noticed a good friend of my father traded to Nissan. I gave him speech 101 get back in a Volvo now! Like dad he was a elderly professional man with a PhD and pleanty of money. A young well meaning member of his family suggested he switch to a Nissan Altima of all things. He died last night in intensive care from being t-bone hit, luckily he was driving alone. The car collapsed crushing him so the curtains and seat bags did no good. Our SIPS equipped cars have a center crumple zone for the SIPS bars to dissipate impact energy and prevent the seat from collapsing and crushing the occupant.

I personally have been saved from death or severe injuries by two Volvo cars. The 2002 S80 was viewed by my parents personally at the wreck site as my dog at the time was not allowed to ride in the ambulance so the police contacted them to get the dog from the wreckage. My father rushed in the hospital room expecting the worse to find i had not one scratch or even a bruise. That car rolled way out into a field demolished.

What is all the money in the world worth if you skimp on your family's car and someone dies or is permanently damaged? So the next time you suggests someone get rid if their Volvo for anything else think twice, they might be dumb enough to listen to foolish advice. June

[93Regina]

RE: food for thought

I suspect traveling around higher density population areas, and driving on interstate highways is by and large where most accidents happen.

If you live on Molokai, where they have no traffic lights, no shopping malls, and no skyscrapers, once in a great while, there will be an accident, and usually a single vehicle accident.

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) does rate vehicles in terms of safety/etc.

Do note, statistics can be misleading....for instances,

1. Older Cars Cause More Fatal Accidents - Teens Are More Likely to Die

Well, who tends to drive these vehicles? Oh, cars don't cause accidents...I snipped that from a Google search.

2. "The dominant factor among the vehicles with the worst or highest death rates is that they tend to be the smallest vehicles on the road," said Lund. See this PDF

Size can matter in an accident, but here, who are these drivers? Smaller vehicles tend to cost less, which those on tight budgets tend to buy, and who may have lower credit scores.

FWIW: July 2007

Credit-Based Insurance Scores: Impacts on Consumers of Automobile Insurance: A Report to Congress By the Federal Trade Commission - Using a large database of insurance policies, the study shows that scores are effective predictors of risk under automobile policies.

In other words, people with higher credit scores tend to have fewer accidents.

Footnote - Many U.S. car insurance companies use credit-based insurance scores to help determine risk. (Unless you live in Massachusetts, Hawaii, or California, where the practice has been banned.) And studies have shown that there's good reason to use credit-based scoring in developing rates.

[mrbrian200]

June, you're really lookin' to pick a few brains with that one.

In short, before the Volvo I didn't seem to be terribly concerned about this. Now? Absolutely.

Rather long insightful essay taking form in the word processor. Volvo marketing department, should they catch wind of it, would probably find interesting. But rather than post a stream of consciousness now, I'll attempt to clean up some of the run on sentences filled with confusing nested dependent clauses and conversational broken English first. (Sometime tomorrow).

Next day Edit. It reads too much like a concept for an ad campaign from 1970s. I'm not sure if I should post it or pitch it.

[June]

RE: food for thought

I suspect traveling around higher density population areas, and driving on interstate highways is by and large where most accidents happen.

If you live on Molokai, where they have no traffic lights, no shopping malls, and no skyscrapers, once in a great while, there will be an accident, and usually a single vehicle accident.

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) does rate vehicles in terms of safety/etc.

Do note, statistics can be misleading....for instances,

1. Older Cars Cause More Fatal Accidents - Teens Are More Likely to Die

Well, who tends to drive these vehicles? Oh, cars don't cause accidents...I snipped that from a Google search.

2. "The dominant factor among the vehicles with the worst or highest death rates is that they tend to be the smallest vehicles on the road," said Lund. See this PDF

Size can matter in an accident, but here, who are these drivers? Smaller vehicles tend to cost less, which those on tight budgets tend to buy, and who may have lower credit scores.

FWIW: July 2007

Credit-Based Insurance Scores: Impacts on Consumers of Automobile Insurance: A Report to Congress By the Federal Trade Commission - Using a large database of insurance policies, the study shows that scores are effective predictors of risk under automobile policies.

In other words, people with higher credit scores tend to have fewer accidents.

Footnote - Many U.S. car insurance companies use credit-based insurance scores to help determine risk. (Unless you live in Massachusetts, Hawaii, or California, where the practice has been banned.) And studies have shown that there's good reason to use credit-based scoring in developing rates.

One hole in the idea smaller cars have to cause more injuries and deaths is the Volvo C30 which the IIHS rates in every test of every year model as good their highest mark.

It just seems to me with the technology in existence mostly invented by Volvo should be on all cars in 2018. A collapsed seat on a side impact in a new car is inexcusable in my opinion. After all Volvo has had SIPS bars in seats for a good 30 years. How much extra could it cost? June

[93Regina]

Volvo has had SIPS bars in seats for a good 30 years.

Here's the press release: VOLVO '92: NEW MODEL, NEW ENGINE AND A UNIQUE SAFETY INNOVATION

So, roughly 26 years ago...unknown if this was patented or not.

Of course, with Volvo trucks (semi-trucks), this is not an issue with car-truck collisions.

Still, I suspect people with higher credit scores pay more attention when driving...except for those in autonomously driven vehicles. Some accidents can't be avoided, but an alert driver has a better chance when stuff happens.

[June]

Volvo has had SIPS bars in seats for a good 30 years.

Here's the press release: VOLVO '92: NEW MODEL, NEW ENGINE AND A UNIQUE SAFETY INNOVATION

So, roughly 26 years ago...unknown if this was patented or not.

Of course, with Volvo trucks (semi-trucks), this is not an issue with car-truck collisions.

Still, I suspect people with higher credit scores pay more attention when driving...except for those in autonomously driven vehicles. Some accidents can't be avoided, but an alert driver has a better chance when stuff happens.

Volvo gave the 3 point safety belt to the world, SIPS bag, Air Curtain, WIPPS, why not the bar? Couldn't each manufacturer design their own crush proof seat? Thanks for the link. I don't know how to add links, nor did i look it up as my 850 had the bar and bag in 95. June

[Rattnalle]

The way I see it there are a few different components to safety with some examples for each:

The things I can do myself:
Not use cheap, poor or wrong tyres (like all seasons ever or snows in the summer), they're literally the only thing keeping the car on the road so it's the wrong place to save
Make sure the brakes and other parts of the car are in good working order
Not drive like an idiot, keeping distances, my eyes on the road and sensible speeds

The things I can influence or mitigate but not completely prevent:
Idiotic stuff that people around me do, keeping distances buys me time to react but I can't really control whats going on around me
Road conditions, even though I run the right tyres for the weather and drive sensibly I'm probably going to get caught off guard by something eventually (it's happened once when sand on the road together with slightly too high speed sent me and my 744 16 valve sideways into a barrier at 50-60 mph).

The things I can't do too much about:
Idiotic stuff that people around me do when keeping a distance and acting sensibly isn't enough. If I'm standing still already, someone does something really unexpected or there's nowhere to go but off the road or into a barrier. Here's where not driving a shitty or too old car really comes into play.

Most modern cars in Europe score quite similarly in the EURO NCAP tests these days since they're hard to sell otherwise and a lot of safety equipment like automatic emergency braking is mandatory in new cars (or will be very soon). That said I'd still much rather have an accident in a larger car from the upmarket brands like Volvo, BMW or Mercedes. My car is old enough to not be considered that safe anymore but I can think of quite a few newer cars that I'd be more afraid of having an accident in anyway not to mention pretty much anything else that's the same age.

[93Regina]

Next day Edit. It reads too much like a concept for an ad campaign from 1970s. I'm not sure if I should post it or pitch it.

This link is for a Google search, but go down the page to "Away Bus! - Page 64 - Google Books Result" and click on it for more info on their tech.

Book is Away Bus! By Chief Driver 2017 Copyright
A compendium of articles from The Mirror (Lokomotion Corner and Your DriveWorld) 2011-2017

Enclosed pic describes one of their ideas...but twenty some computers....can you say Murphy's law, or planned obsolesce?

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[mrbrian200]

Enclosed pic describes one of their ideas...but twenty some computers....can you say Murphy's law, or planned obsolescence?

Not sure. But I bet it threw a few mechanics into a tizzy back in the day.

[kranz]

I came across this VOLVO S40 sedan at the scrap yard. It was apparently involved in an extremely violent rear end collision. It shows in a dramatic way what to expect in the way of safety in one of VOLVO's smaller vehicles. The entire rear cargo area of the car was completely compressed. The driver and passenger seats were intact. The front air bags were not triggered. One of the photos shows the rear seats were displaced forward.

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