Volvo's 'zero fatality future' a "vision"

Volvo anticipates its 'Drive Me' project will be the foundation stone for a visionary future without deaths on the road, but there's some debate as to whether the vision is solidly locked in place.

Volvo itself doesn't suggest it is anything more than a 'nice to have', albeit distinctly possible, based on the trend line for crash data it has collected over decades.

It will hand over 100 cars to paying customers in the company's Swedish home base of Gothenburg, in two years' time. The cars and their owners will take part in the company's on-going research to eliminate human error from road trauma – and minimise the road toll accordingly. How far that road toll can be minimised is, of course, a matter for conjecture.

It was, in fact, conjecture raised by Australian journalists during this week's global launch of the new XC90 in Spain. Volvo has gone on record with its view that fatalities involving 'new' Volvos can be reduced to zero by 2020. According to Graeme McInally, Volvo's Senior Manager, Crash Analysis, it's more of an extrapolation than an iron-clad guarantee.

"We know from lab testing of today's products – the XC90 – they're so much better than our previous products. So, from the field data that we have, and we see the trend and the curve tending towards zero – and we know that our products today are so much better, safety-wise – we can extrapolate from that curve that we're going to head towards zero.

"Of course, random effects, you can't cater for everything, but we see our trend is going towards zero – and that's why we have this vision."

When Aussie journalists questioned the validity of Volvo's 'zero-fatality' future, claiming that it had originally been presented as practically pre-determined, rather than as "a vision", McInally's colleague and Product Communication Manager at Volvo, Trevor Rourke, joined the debate.

"Not even the Pope is infallible," he wryly observed.

"What we're saying is that our vision is to make that [death in a new Volvo] next to near impossible. The vision is that nobody will be hurt or seriously injured or killed in a brand-new Volvo from 2020.

"We're not taking a step back on anything.

"It's a line in the sand... and if anybody can achieve this it's Volvo."

Scheduled to enter the public domain in Gothenburg from 2017, 'Drive Me' will move to a new stage of research and development: trialling new technology for autonomous cars and driven vehicles to co-exist in the same environment. It's much easier to achieve a death-free year on the roads if all cars are autonomous, but that won't happen for decades, if ever. Volvo's execs in Spain for the XC90 launch admit the difficulty, but claim the company is up to the challenge.

"It's the integration of active safety and passive safety..." McInally began.

"We do what we need to do to stop people dying in cars, autonomous or not," Rourke interrupted. "It's about taking control when we need to take control, and giving as much control and enjoyment to the driver as and when they need and want it."

"We have a project at the moment, the 'Drive Me' project... and we have one of the most advanced autonomous driving projects of all car makers. We're way ahead of Google..." Rourke said.

"The thing that differentiates Volvo from the likes of Audi, who are also doing quite a lot of autonomous driving 'gimmicks'..." he continued, before being side-tracked by laughs and gasps from the journalists.

"Well let's face it, you take an A8 [sic] and you turn it into an autonomous car and you throw it around a track and you do donuts in it... doesn't the driver want to do that?

"What do you want to use autonomous drive for?"

The answer to that came from a journalist who described commuting with a two-word phrase beginning with the word 'boring'. Rourke offered that autonomous driving should be about alleviating the driver of all that 'boring s..t'.

"[It should] free up time for the driver so that they can do the things they want to do using the wonderful interactive system that they have – surf the web, do the work, talk on the phone, watch a film... those kinds of things.

"We're designing autonomous driving around the needs of the consumer, not around... some cheap PR."

Rourke admitted that Volvo's work was presently just freeway testing, from on ramps to off ramps.

"But we're progressing into more complex situations..."

The 'Drive Me' project will rely heavily on the Volvo Cloud, essentially an infrastructural device linking cars and infrastructure to reduce the prospects of risk on the road – hopefully to nil.

"We're doing a lot of projects at the moment about taking information from the car and sharing it with other road users," says Rourke. "So there's huge potential in this area, not just for Volvo users, but for all drivers – and for society as a whole... for local authorities and utility companies, for example.

The Volvo Cloud is one of a number of different infrastructure solutions being promoted around the world, and sooner or later, car companies and governments will need to plump for one over the rest – a point with which Rourke agrees.

"Absolutely, I think this is where the European Commission... national governments will play a crucial role towards autonomous driving, towards connected vehicles in the future. Everybody can benefit from this."

But there are privacy concerns, and provisions of one sort or another will need to be implemented – and there will likely need to be uniformity of legislation covering this point across the world, or at least the part of the world that wants to adopt autonomous motoring and very low levels of road trauma.

"I think also that the major question's to be resolved as far as legal issues are concerned. I think legislation has to come up to speed with this..." says McInally.

"The EU Commission is very active in trying to gather data from cars to use for common good – and Volvo's obviously quite engaged in that," said Rourke.

"There's legislation issues to be taken care of as far as personal data's concerned; the driver of the car owns the data that's being collected in the car..." McInally explained.

"This is going to be the issue going forward, I think, who owns the data and how the data's used. Volvo has a very strong view on this – that the data, if it's ever used, is with the full permission of the driver, and it's anonymously used," Rourke concluded.

This might be as simple as the driver tapping an 'OK' button in the car to submit acceptance the data will be used for the good of the public. The anonymity element is essential. It's a problem with a broader scope than just C2X-style infrastructure communications – broad as that is already. According to Rourke it has ramifications for connected infotainment systems such as Apple CarPlay and Android Auto too, both of which have been courted by Volvo for the new XC90's Sensus Connect system.

In the meantime, Volvo is forging ahead with 'Drive Me', which will involve the company's 'Autopilot' system being installed in 100 test vehicles. Volvo acknowledges that it's unrealistic to expect a human driver to leap in and correct a situation the Autopilot cannot itself correct at short notice, so the company is configuring the system to allow the driver plenty of warning when it's handing back control – as it would in bad weather or a technical glitch. Should the driver – due to incapacity – fail to resume control, the car will bring itself to a stop automatically.

Many of the sub systems sending data to the Autopilot are already available in standard Volvo customer cars sold today, in varying degrees. They include radar, cameras, ultrasonic sensors and lasers for a 360° view. The car's on-board GPS system also keeps the Autopilot aware of its situation.