Safety Through Technology
By Wayne Maruna

    The 1990 film Crazy People was sub-titled “a comedy about truth in advertising.” Dudley Moore portrayed an advertising executive who suffers a nervous breakdown and goes on to create a series of “truthful” advertisements, blunt and bawdy and of no use to his boss.  One of the more memorable ads was “Volvo – they’re boxy but they’re good”.

    So here it is 25 years later, and I am driving a new Volvo.  I picked it up a week ago as I write this.  I never pictured myself driving a Volvo, and how I came to decide on it is beyond the scope of this article.  Our last vehicle purchase was in mid-2010, and I will tell you that the advance in technology being built into automobiles is mind boggling.  I’m not talking about the hidden mechanical stuff that goes into making 4 cylinder engines perform like V6s or allows cars to go 100K miles between tune-ups. I’m talking about the actual driver experience.  Sitting behind the steering wheel, I feel like I am driving a computer and everything between that steering wheel and the firewall is a user interface, almost like a computer monitor.

    Case in point – the gauge package.  Don’t like the looks of it?  You can change it with a couple of button presses.  The gauges look like real mechanical gauges, but they’re not.  They’re ‘virtual’ gauges on a computer screen. You have your choice of three ‘themes’: Elegance, Eco, and Performance.  As you’re driving down the road, a diminutive speed limit sign displays in the round speedometer.  It uses info obtained by the GPS system to figure out where you are and determine what the speed limit is in that stretch of road.  It’s not perfect and it tends to lag as you go through a speed limit change, but for the most part it is accurate.  I just hope it’s not tied into any law enforcement electronics, because if you exceed the speed limit (which, ahem, I have only done to test the system) the speed limit indicator will briefly flash at you, then thankfully leave you alone.

    Volvo has a reputation for emphasizing safety in their designs. They are enhancing that reputation by applying loads of safety-related technology into their cars.  One of my favorite safety features is something Volvo calls BLIS, which is their blind spot information system.  This is an option offered by most car makers, and I just love it.  When you’re on the road and a car is in an adjacent lane approaching a rear quarter panel of your car, an orange light glows near your front outside mirrors to alert you to that fact so you don’t attempt an ill-advised lane change. As someone who is aging and whose neck doesn’t swivel like it once did, I really appreciate this feature.

    Speaking of lane changes, the vehicle is equipped with a lane departure warning system.  I met up with it unexpectedly.  We were driving the car home from the dealer via Airport Rd, which as any Taberna resident will tell you is desperately in need of widening.  As we drove along, we kept hearing a rapid chiming noise.  My wife told me I better take the car back to the dealer and see what was wrong.  Well, I figured out that what was wrong was that I wasn’t doing a very good job of keeping the vehicle within the painted lane markings.  It’s not just me - watch anyone drive down that road, hugging either the outside line or the middle divider line because the road is so narrow.  The chiming was the lane departure warning system telling me to literally get my butt back on the straight and narrow.  There is an option to turn it off, but I think it is too valuable to do so. It will also trigger if you change lanes without using your turn signal indicator, which is added incentive to do so.

     The ‘Pedestrian and Cyclist Detection with Full Auto Brake’ system has a feature that helps detect pedestrians and applies the brakes to help slow or stop the vehicle. It uses a radar sensor which is also used by the adaptive cruise control system, which maintains a selected distance, measured in car lengths (which you select), from the car ahead of you when using the cruise control.  So if you’re in a 55 mph zone and the person ahead slows to 50 mph, the system slows you down to maintain that 4-car (e.g.) distance until such time as you disengage or change lanes.  The system works.  It explained why I had my cruise set for 50 going down Hwy 70 in James City, but I was only going 45 because I was coming up on the person ahead of me who was only doing 45.

    The radar sensor is integral to what Volvo calls the City Safety System which is designed to help avoid low speed collisions when driving in slow-moving, stop-and-go traffic.  It functions when the car is going between 3 and 30 MPH, and will trigger brief, forceful braking if it senses that a low-speed collision is imminent. The radar sensors also work in conjunction with cameras to assist in avoiding crunching sounds when parallel parking a vehicle. Similarly, the audible and visible alerts of the cross traffic warning system has saved my bacon a couple times already while backing out of driveways and not seeing vehicles in the road about to cross my path.  The system is like having another backseat driver with better eyes.

    And of course, I could not call the vehicle a rolling computer unless it offered internet connectivity, which it does.

    When all these features become overwhelming, you can elect to view the owner’s manual on-screen in the dash. I’ve become a frequent reader of that manual out of necessity.

    Volvo is not alone in these high-tech safety offerings. Most car manufacturers offer them in their mid-to-upper line cars, and the government is mandating that rear cameras be added to all vehicles. If you find yourself in the market for a new vehicle, do consider the available safety options that technology has made possible.  They tend to be pricey, but they could easily pay for themselves, and might even save your life.