With auto accidents being one of the leading causes of death in the world, car manufacturers have been working to make their cars safer. However, Volvo has recently made the bold promise to make cars “death proof” by 2020.
Lex Kerssemakers, CEO of Volvo Cars North America said that in just a few years, driving a car will be safer than climbing a ladder.
“If you meet Swedish engineers, they’re pretty genuine. They don’t say things when they don’t believe in it,” he said.
Volvo safety engineer Erik Coelingh said that self-driving cars will also play a role in the safety of future vehicles.
“With the development of full autonomy we are going to push the limits of automotive safety, because if you make a fully autonomous vehicle you have to think through everything that potentially can happen with a car,” he said.
Of course, the engineers have said that if a person were extremely determined or extremely stupid, they may still be able to die in one of these future vehicles.
The new vehicles will be equipped with technology that will allow drivers to avoid obstacles even if they are manually driving the car.
For the past few years, Google’s self-driving cars have been traveling around the country to test how well they work and how safe they are. The cars have been in a total of 13 accidents, however, the self-driving vehicles were not responsible for any of the accidents that took place.
Most of the accidents occurred when the cars were rear-ended by other drivers who were not paying attention. The cars have logged about 1,011,338 miles since 2009 without a driver, and then nearly another million with a driver.
The cars are maneuvered with complex algorithms, that calculate everything from weather conditions, to red lights, to evasive moves in accident situations.
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