In the quest for an accident free future, Volvo Car Corporation's short-term target is that no one will be killed or injured in a new Volvo car by 2020.

This month, as we introduce this objective by Volvo Car Corporation, we’ll take a closer look at one of the technologies Volvo will focus on in the coming years. That technology is “Intelligent warning and braking,” which has already been implemented in some 2010 Volvo models.

Jan Ivarsson, head of Safety Strategy at Volvo Cars, said recently that: “Zero is the one and only solution for us. As the leader in car safety, we can’t accept that people are killed or injured just because they want to transport themselves from A to B. Our goal is to come so close to zero that a single car accident is defined as a disaster, not an acceptable part of our daily lives.” Working towards zero has been the ambition of Volvo ever since the company was founded back in 1927. The goal has always been to make every new car model safer than the previous one.

Ivarsson added that, “In recent years, focus has shifted from protection to prevention, and we are making continuous progress. New technology in Volvo cars such as Collision Warning with Auto Brake and City Safety can warn and help you mitigate or avoid an accident completely.”

Volvo Cars’ strategy includes a broader view of safety than the traditional focus on accidents -  applying a holistic perspective where the safety aspects can be divided into five phases:

Normal driving - where the driver is well informed and can stay alert.

Conflict - where technology helps the driver to handle a difficult situation.

Avoidance - where the car acts automatically to avoid a collision if the driver fails to react.

Damage Reduction – where the car’s safety systems help to reduce the crash energy in order to minimize the effect on the occupants.

After the Collision – where the car calls for assistance.

The main challenge for Volvo is to keep the driver in the Normal driving mode. This means that the car itself has to handle potential issues, and help the driver back to normal mode if a critical situation occurs.  One of the ways to do this is through Intelligent warning and braking technologies.

2010 model-year Volvos can be equipped with a number of intelligent technologies that detect potential dangers and help the driver deal with them - either through a warning or, if necessary, by automatic braking.

"When you introduce an automatic system you have to make sure that you don't create a more dangerous situation than the one you want to prevent. It is not hard to make the car brake automatically. The challenge is to know when it must brake. The detection technology must also be reliable," says Jan Ivarsson.

Volvo prioritizes the issues that are the most common and dangerous in real-life traffic situations. Volvo has already introduced a number of preventive systems that detect moving and stationary vehicles in front of the car and, next year, Volvo will offer customers a new feature that detects pedestrians.