For the first time ever in a crash test, Volvo Cars dropped several new Volvo cars multiple times from a crane, from a height of 30m.
IT is the most extreme crash test ever executed by Volvo Cars, and a crucial one.
Extrication specialists often use cars crashed at the Volvo Cars Safety Centre to hone their life-saving skills.
To enable rescue services to prepare for any possible crash scenario and to simulate the forces that erupt in the most extreme crashes, beyond what can be simulated with ordinary crash testing, Volvo Cars recently took equally extreme measures.
For the first time, it dropped several new Volvos multiple times from a crane, from a height of 30m.
This approach helped create enough damage to adequately simulate the damage found in the most extreme crash scenarios – think of single-car accidents at very high speed, accidents whereby a car hits a truck at high speed, or accidents whereby a car takes a severe hit from the side.
In such situations, people inside the vehicle are likely to be in a critical condition. Therefore the priority is to get people out of the car and to a hospital as quickly as possible, using hydraulic rescue tools known in the industry as “jaws of life”.
To develop new extrication techniques, it is crucial for rescue workers to constantly update their familiarity with newer car models and review their processes. This motivated Volvo Cars to carry out such an extreme crash test to give the rescue team a real-time challenge to work on.
Extrication specialists often talk about the golden hour – they need to release and get a patient to the hospital within one hour after the accident has happened.
“We have been working closely together with the Swedish rescue services for many years, ” says Volvo Cars Traffic Accident Research Team senior investigator Håkan Gustafson.
“That is because we have the same goal – to have safer roads for all. We hope no one ever needs to experience the most severe accidents, but not all accidents can be avoided.
“So it is vital there are methods to help save lives when the most severe accidents do happen.”
All findings from the crashes and the resulting extrication work will be collected in an extensive research report.
This report will be made available free to rescue workers elsewhere, allowing them to benefit from the findings and further develop their life-saving capabilities.
Usually, rescue workers get their training vehicles from scrapyards. But these cars are often up to two decades old.
And in terms of steel strength, safety cage construction and overall durability, there is a vast difference between modern cars and those built 15 to 20 years ago.
And new Volvos are made of some of the hardest steel found in modern cars.
This makes it crucial for rescue workers to constantly update their familiarity with newer car models and review their processes, in order to develop new extrication techniques.
In other words, these training sessions can mean the difference between life and death.
So at the request of the rescue services, Volvo Cars decided to step things up a notch.
“Normally we only crash cars in the laboratory, but this was the first time we dropped them from a crane, ” says Gustafson.
“We knew we would see extreme deformations after the test, and we did this to give the rescue team a real challenge to work with.”
A total of 10 Volvos, of different models, were dropped from the crane several times.
Before the drop, Volvo Cars safety engineers made exact calculations about how much pressure and force each car needed to be exposed to, in order to reach the desired level of damage.
Recently, Volvo Cars launched a new campaign – “A Million More” to highlight car safety through the years and the courage to make bold and controversial decisions in order to save more lives. This extreme crash test is part of the “A Million More” campaign.
After spending decades to get the world to accept its life-saving three-point safety belt invention, Volvo Cars is once again introducing an initiative that challenges the way industry and public perceive safety with the introduction of the 180 km/h speed cap.
For more information, visit https://www.volvocars.com/my/why-volvo/human-innovation/future-of-driving/safety/a-million-more.
