Pioneering whiplash and safety measures with their WHIPS system, Volvo recently set up a car accident centre in China to provide research data on Chinese car accidents for its own development purposes and for car accident claims.

The Thatcham tests conducted this year were on behalf on car accident claim research companies and International Insurance Whiplash Prevention Group, IIWPG. Volvo was the only company to get a ‘good' mark for every model of car tested.

This was largely due to the seat structure of their cars - designed to give maximum support to a driver's back and neck to reduce the chances of a whiplash personal injury. Thousands of whiplash car accident compensation claims are made yearly.

Thatcham Crash Laboratory Manager said: "Volvo has shown a continuing commitment to safety and their seats once again performed very well in our tests. This is supported by real world personal injury data which confirms that these seats do produce a significant reduction in whiplash personal injuries – Volvo continue to be the trend setter in this area."

Lotta Jacobsson, technical expert of Volvo Cars Safety Centre believes that "since Volvo introduce WHIPS in 1998, the feedback from Volvo Cars' real life Accident Research Team shows that WHIPS has halved the risk of long-term personal neck injures from rear-end impacts, even compared to previous Volvo seats. Other independent field studies have shown a significant [personal] injury reduction."

Volvo Car Safety Centre
The Volvo Car Safety Centre is the most technologically advanced crash test laboratory in the world.

Cars are tested on two tracks - one fixed 154 metre track and an adjustable 108 metre track – to reproduce car crashes from a variety of speeds and collision angles: rear-end, front-end and 90 degrees.

The test cars used on the tracks have special sensors accelerated using electric motors. Laser technology controls the angle and speed the cars crash at.

The collisions are filmed using high-speed cameras which record up to 3,000 images a second. The material is then used for car accident data analysis, including information from two cameras which sit underneath the track.

Volvo uses some of the most powerful computers available to simulate its car accidents – 300 of its processors are equal to one thousand home PCs.

Simulation engineers input crash data gathered during the day to get test results for the following day. Ten years ago the process took three days.

Volvo, Thatcham and ESC
Amongst the new developments being tested by Volvo and Thatcham is Electronic Stability Control (ESC) in vehicles. ESC is a technology that helps drivers avoid losing control of their car, to prevent vehicle accidents and potential fatalities.

ESC automatically controls cars by comparing driver steering and braking activity. If the technology picks up information about the vehicle shifting away from the required course – e.g. if it moves to the left or right suddenly – it forces the car to brake to restore it to its former position.

ESC can reduce the chance of a car accident by up to 40 per cent but is available as standard on less than 40 per cent of new cars being sale in the UK.

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