Jeeze... they just make driving more and more boring by the minute...

It's very easy to have a crash resistant car. Don't let a woman drive it. >D

Nice. Perhaps they should work on long range electric cars. Or cars like the Smart car or Carver type designs.

Whatever all that sonar radar stuff is BS. They need to start making mandatory roll cages inside vehicles to add rigidity and make a carbon fiber/Kevlar tub for the wrap around like they do in race cars. Combine that with multi point racing harnesses straight from factory that reside within your seat coupled with front and side airbags I'm pretty sure you can walk away from anything.

Although those sensors aren't bad but I would much rather have a reinforced cockpit than a computer anyday.

Can't wait until someone driving one of these cars gets injured.

All this will do is make a person less cautious, driving like madmen on the street because they can't get hurt while everybody else.

I just wonder how many people will get run over or someone else car flips over because this cars hits theres, this will just make drivers more careless.

If they built cars like the use to in the 20's without all the safety features how many people do you think would be doing all the crazy s**t they do now.

But does it got a cop motor? 440 cubic inch plant? Cop tires? Cop suspension? cop shocks? Is it a model made before catalytic converters so it'll run good on regular gas?
[video.google.com]

Until someone invents force-fields on 2019.

Automatic brakes, I see that working...

Will they offer it with a convertible option? I'd tap that.

I want a car that has ejection seats. It's all, "Collision Imminent" ...and all of a sudden, you're 900 feet overhead, watching your car disintegrate into a fireball, along with the dumbass in a huge SUV that you've eliminated. Er, vehicular manslaughter...accident...kinda...

"So A times B times C is the formula we use to determine whether we should install all this life saving and fuel efficient tech we've been sitting on for the past five years." A times B times C equals X. If X is just too inconvenient for us to install on next year's model, we don't."

"Which car company do you work for?"

"...A major one."

Sure, add new safety features to increase the price of your vehilces while completely ignoring the fact consumers want vehicles with longer mileage.

Any kind of vehicle is safe to drive. If anyone was really concerned with accidents then they would make people take refresher drivers ed courses every 5 years.

@aaj111: Mercedes already produces cars with automatic braking.

I think people try to drive well to protect their only means of transportation at least as much as they do their life. Despite the fact that SUV owners may feel safer in their hulking behemoths I doubt they want a pay to fix a car any more than anyone else. In my opinion, SUV owners were probably reckless people before they even bought their vehicle.

"...lowering death rates by half with just a 10 MPH decrease in smash speed."

Great, now that guy coming from the pub will only hit that pregnant mother's car doing 90mph, reducing the chance of his death by more than half. Half of zero, because the fucking drunk never dies.

Trust me, if you swap the airbags with some 8 inch knives that explode out into your face if you crash, people will be VERY safe drivers.

Step 1: Create idiot proof driver.
Step 2: Remove all other drivers from the road as they are all idiots.
Step 3: Market your car as injury proof.

As long as individuals are allowed to drive themselves; this is a pipe dream.

...edit...
This is why we don't have flying cars! Can you see the idiots on the road today in flying cars? Scary shit man.

@smegz: that and how would you go about regulating air space or making sure someone doesn't fly one into a building on purpose?

Take the cellphone usage out of the equation, would certainly end a lot of accidents, C'mon July 1st!!! (In most states it'll be illegal. Hard to enforce prob., but nonetheless it'll help. In CA, I shit you not, I saw a lady eating a bowl of rice and talking on the phone while driving, and another instance a Guy had a book near the center of the steering wheel and reading while going 70+ North on I-5, I shit you not!!!! I gave him the finger and he put the book down, and no, it wasn't a map, it was clearly a paperback of some kind, what a moron! People are generally pretty f-ing stupid when driving...think they have to come to a complete stop to turn a corner (prob do so they don't spill their starbucks or hurt one of their 9 kids in the van.....anyway people suck in cars, and not just in CA., I've seen it everywhere, my hometown included, Spokane, WA

please no Personal Flying machines ever!!!!!!

P.S. Shenanigans,

You are truly a moron who lives at home with his mother. Most Women drive Volvos number one, number 2 they are very nice luxury/sports cars and will run forever, and number 3 one of the safest cars on the market today!

Faslane

Sounds pretty neat actually. I can't help but wonder if an "accident proof" car is like something "unhackable". You know like Blue-Ray, DVD, and the old CD.

Perhaps they should just put ejection seats like James Bond. It will automatically eject you if it detects crash imminent.

That would be funny to watch.

Nice. Everything designed to save lives is always nice...
And I don't really think people will be more careless only because of that. The bill would still be fairly high... and that's mostly what people are thinking when you talk about accidents.

Because if people really thought about getting killed in car crashes, there wouldn't be so many of them in the first place.

And not so many DUI charges too.

@vertigo: And how much are you willing to spend on all of that racing-style safety equipment. A race car doesn't come in at 500k-1m for nothing.

@dMo: The best drivers are still at the mercy of the careless rubes. Mario Andretti can get jackknifed at an intersection like everyone else.

Volvo is "safe" because their marketing department tells you so. They won some safety award twenty years ago and parlayed that into a new company image of safety, where most of their cars are slightly better than average when it comes to crash ratings.

They're the Bose of car manufacturers, just not quite as expensive.

Why engineer something when you can just market it instead?

@bobman1235: That may be the case, but people buying Volvos for the added safety are qualitatively different drivers than those buying cars for aesthetic appeal. They're far more likely to be defensive drivers out there being as careful as they can to begin with, so these added features will only help. That's the thing about Volvos...they still have yet to get rid of that "boxy" image, even if the cars are much better looking than they were in the 80s are and no longer rectangles with wheels. So people with the need for speed aren't buying Volvos.

I guarantee I could injure myself in this car.

The funny thing is that Volvo, today, is no safer a car than any other quality manufacturer. The reason that Volvo's name is perceived as being associated with safe cars is that they were the first manufacturer to standardize on 3 point safety harnesses -- which made a dramatic leap in injury prevention. Realistically though Volvo is no safer than most Mercedes, Toyota, Honda, Acura, etc... It's all about perception. It's just funny when I hear someone say today that "Oh a Volvo -- that's a really safe car, great choice!". Uh huh, retard.

@bobman1235: "Why engineer something when you can just market it instead?"

Have you ever driven a Volvo? Try it out before you criticize then engineering. A Volvo at 100K miles is just getting started. Their safety is not just marketing. Yes twenty years ago they were the safest cars in the world. They didn't get worse everyone else got better, they've been setting the standard for safety and everyone else caught up. Now they're pushing the limits again.

P.s. if you have a need for speed try the S60R. Is 300Hp enough?

"one of the complaints we've heard about big SUVs-it's supposedly more safe for you, but completely ruptures the person you hit who's driving a small car."

People who buy Urban Assault Vehicles are inherently dangerous drivers anyhow, as a rule. My wife refers to them as "dick substitutes." The drivers are overcompensating for a lack, and drive aggressively, with a casual disregard for safety, courtesy, and common sense.

What they have forgotten is that "4WD lets you get stuck further from the road."

@draconis: Keep drinking the Volvo Kool Aid man... Mileage doesn't mean a whole lot when it comes to "safety". This is because mileage is conditional based on the drive conditions. Sure, if I drove a Volvo off a 10 foot ramp every day, all day long for 100,000 miles that might stress the frame more than usual. But I think what you really mean is that at 100k your Volvo still, operationally, works well. Duh -- pretty much every car built today can do 100k no problem. Wooop-dee-frickin-doo about your 300HP S60R. Do you see many out there? No, because the typical Volvo driver is not about performance. If you want 300HP in a fun car to drive buy an Impreza WRX STI or a Lancer Evolution. At least you're getting a car with a lot of technology in it vs an overpriced, heavy, 300hp grandpa mobile. Get a clue yo. For 2008 your beloved S60 isn't on the list of top picks by the IIHS, check it out in the sidebar: http://www.iihs.org/ratings/default.aspx

@draconis2941: Yep. My mom got rid of her '86 Volvo 740 when it had 219K miles on it, and it could definitely have gone further but she just wanted something new. You can drive those things into the ground. My '84 240 had 177K on it when we sold it to a kid going into college a few years ago, and for all I know it's still on the road now.

It's not a matter of marketing when the product actually DOES what they say. And as for safety, sure other cars may be rated just as well these days. But back in the 80's my Dad walked away without a scratch from a crash with a van (driving my mom's 740 Volvo mentioned above) that practically totaled the car. I went to the lot afterwards to see it and it was amazing how everything had neatly compressed around the driver's seat to avoid injury. So I could actually trust those ratings.

Hey honey, my car is death prof . Sure that's a good pick up line