Volvo: Safety Testing Cars at an Amusement Park?

Volvo has a reputation for safety.  They have taken their testing methods to a new level.

Volvo Cars’ safety expert Anders Axelson knows that brilliant ideas can pop up in the strangest of circumstances. A visit to Legoland with his twin daughters in 2007 inspired Anders to turn an amusement park ride into an efficient test method in Volvo Cars’ quest for better protection in run-off road crashes.

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"“Watching people being thrown in all directions during a ride in the ‘Robocoaster’, I suddenly realised that those rapid, random movements resembled the violent forces occupants in a run-off road crash are exposed to,” says Anders Axelson."

Run-off road crashes had been on Anders’ mind since 2006 when Volvo Cars intensified the development of technology to help protect car occupants in these common and complex scenarios.

"“The engineers developed promising solutions to actively retract the occupants in order to keep them in position. But since running complete cars into the terrain is a time-consuming and expensive test method, we needed a quicker and cheaper solution to evaluate the ideas,” Anders Axelson recalls."

The stroke of genius conveniently came on a family trip to Legoland in Denmark. At the time, Anders’s twin girls were too small for the ‘Robocoaster’, but after watching other kids being shaken by the robot arm, he realised that the ride had potential beyond making kids scream with joy.

The result is a world-first run-off road protection package that includes rapid electrical safety belt retraction as well as unique ‘energy-absorbing’ functionality in the seat that cushions the vertical forces that occur in a ‘hard landing’ in the terrain.

"“The most valuable result from the ‘Robocoaster’ tests is probably the insight into how well the safety belt retraction interacts with the enhanced side support in our new seat generation,” says Anders Axelson."

By the way, Anders Axelson never went on the ‘Robocoaster’ ride during that visit to Legoland. “No way. Violent rides like that make me sick,” he says with a smile.

[2014. Volvo. The art of Turning an Amusement Park Ride into a Run-Off Road Test at Volvo Cars Safety Centre. [Press Release] via http://www.newspressusa.com/public/ViewPressRelease.aspx?pr=43880&pr_ref=4544]