Seatbelts Get a Digital-Age, Connected-Technology Safety Makeover

Newsweek

5 days ago

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Volvo pioneered the modern seatbelt in 1959, debuting the three-point harness that had a single strap running from shoulder to hip and across the lap of a driver. Technology has improved the design over the last three-quarters of a century, but concept remains the much the same.
That invention is a pillar of the company's safety focus. Volvo Cars has repeatedly underscored its commitment to reducing fatalities and serious injuries in motor vehicle accidents throughout the years, whether by introducing new high-tech solutions or improving vehicle body structure.
"At Volvo Cars, safety isn't a wish. We actually bring that bold ambition into action, and we reach there by relentless and rigorous testing in this crash lab," Åsa Haglund, head of the Safety Center at Volvo Cars, told Newsweek ahead of the first public three-car sequenced crash test in Torslanda, Sweden.
"Safety isn't magic. It is a matter of dedication, insight and engineering accidents, and that has led us to a long list of safety innovations," Haglund pointed out. Volvo pioneered many components that are standard in cars from manufacturers across the globe today: inflatable airbag curtains (1998), blind spot monitoring technology (2003), rearward-facing child safety seats (1972) and more.
The actual three point safety belt and seat from a Volvo PV 544 model year 1961 that was donated to Smithsonian National Museum of American History on July 14, 2010.
The actual three point safety belt and seat from a Volvo PV 544 model year 1961 that was donated to Smithsonian National Museum of American History on July 14, 2010.
Volvo Cars
"As technology evolves, of course, so do we... Building on our knowledge from real world traffic and driven by our ambition to make cars safer for everyone, we set our own safety standard," Haglund said.
The Volvo Safety Standard is "far more stringent than any requirement or rating regulation to achieve five stars," she explained, saying that it is more than a set of safety test cases, rather a mindset that determines how Volvo engineers its products.
It is with that mindset that the company has updated the three-point harness, giving it a digital-age makeover that brings sensing and connected technology to the safety device. The multi-adaptive safety belt will first come to market in the forthcoming Volvo EX60 battery-electric SUV, which will debut and go on sale soon.
The new safety belt uses computing technology to pair its digital footprint with sensors inside the vehicle that meshes real-time data with information from the outside and inside of the vehicle to better protect Volvo vehicle occupants. The belt adapts its safety settings, such as tension amount, depending on the height, weight, body shape and seating position of the seat occupant.
An occupant wearing the Volvo Cars multi-adaptive safety belt in a crash simulation.
An occupant wearing the Volvo Cars multi-adaptive safety belt in a crash simulation.
Volvo Cars
This differentiation is made because bodies do not respond identically in collisions. A taller occupant is at a higher risk of head injury in a serious collision. With the new safety belt, they will receive a higher load setting to help reduce their risk of head injury. A petite person in a less severe crash would receive a lower belt load setting to limit the risk of rib fractures, the company said.
"No one is the same. Everyone is different. Everyone has different shapes, different size and different protective needs. And then you add to that, that you can crash in so many different ways, and anything can really happen in the field, you realize that protective safety systems inside the car, they need to be able to adapt to a lot of different situations. They need to adapt a lot to different people," Dr. Lotta Jakobsson, Volvo's senior technical specialist for injury prevention, told Newsweek.
Today's seatbelts are generally a one-size-fits-all approach, though their sophistication varies by automaker and vehicle.
The innovative, new Volvo belts are the product of five decades of safety research that has been conducted across 80,000 occupants of real-life car accidents. The company intends to make use of the connected vehicle architecture of the EX60 to update the safety belt's profiles over time, improving the effectiveness, via the car's over-the-air software update capability.