ROCKLEIGH, NJ (January 28, 2016) The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing highway crash deaths and injuries, completed an academic study on Volvo’s City Safety system that is standard on all Volvo vehicles. The report found that standard City Safety in 2011-2012 S60 models and 2010-2012 XC60 models reduced the rate of rear-end crashes by 41%, injuries to occupants by 47% and rear-end crashes involving third-party injuries by 48%.
IIHS concluded that “City Safety appears to be highly effective at reducing rear-end crashes and associated injuries reported to police, even on roadways with speed limits higher than the system’s operating range.”
City Safety is standard on all Volvos sold in the United States and includes a host of safety technologies including automatic emergency braking. The system is being constantly improved, with intersection autobrake being added to the 2016 XC90 and large animal detection with autobrake being introduced in the 2017 S90 sedan. Automatic braking and forward collision warning technologies help further Volvo’s Vision 2020, which states that no one should be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo by the year 2020.
“This study reinforces Volvo Car’s long standing leadership in safety,” said Lex Kerssemakers, President and CEO of Volvo Car USA, “We look forward to future studies where the effectiveness of these systems will be even greater.”
The study, titled “Effectiveness of Volvo’s City Safety low-speed autonomous emergency braking system in reducing police-reported crash rates” was completed by J.B Cicchino with IIHS and can be obtained below.
Effectiveness of Volvo’s City Safety low-speed autonomous emergency braking system in reducing police-reported crash rates
Cicchino, Jessica B.
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
January 2016
IIHS STUDY: VOLVO’S CITY SAFETY click to download full paper
Methods: Poisson regression was used to compare police-reported crash involvement rates per insured vehicle year in 27 U.S. states during 2010-2014 between Volvo 2011-2012 model S60 and 2010-2012 model XC60 vehicles with standard City Safety and other luxury midsize SUVs and cars without the system, respectively, controlling for other factors affecting crash risk.
Results: City Safety reduced rates of rear-end striking crash involvements by 41%, rear-end striking crash involvements with injuries by 47%, and rear-end striking crash involvements with third-party injuries by 48%. Additionally, City Safety was associated with reductions of 14% in crash involvement rates, 13% in multi-vehicle crash involvement rates, 12% in injury crash involvement rates, and 8% in third-party injury crash involvement rates. Reductions in rates of all rear-end striking crash involvements, those with injures, and those with third-party injuries were largest at speed limits of 40-45 mph (54%, 65%, and 66%, respectively), followed by speed limits of 35 mph or less (39%, 43%, and 49%, respectively) and of 50 mph or greater (25%, 30%, and 27%, respectively).
Conclusions: City Safety appears to be highly effective at reducing rear-end crashes and associated injuries reported to police, even on roadways with speed limits higher than the system’s operating range.
Practical applications: Nearly one-third of all police-reported crashes are rear-end crashes. If all vehicles on the road in 2013 had been equipped with low-speed AEB that performed similarly to City Safety, approximately 750,000 police-reported rear-end crashes and 350,000 injuries in such crashes could have been prevented that year.
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