If there’s one car maker you would associate with safety then it’s probably Volvo. Their cars have always had an air of indestructability about them, thanks to a combination of solid construction and and clever safety technology.
But now, thanks to the power of the internet, a single blundered demonstration has removed all credibility from their latest piece of ‘safety’ tech. Volvo had chosen to demo their new automatic braking system to a crowd of motoring journos, showing off how the system stops the car if it detects that it’s going to hit an obstacle. In this case the car was a driverless S60 saloon and the obstacle was a stationary truck.
Unfortunately for Volvo the system completely failed to stop the car from smashing into the back of the truck, turning the demonstration into a PR nightmare. With a number of digital cameras rolling, it was just a question of time before footage of the failure appeared on YouTube.
Apparently the fault that caused the failure would have been spotted if a human had been behind the wheel. Hmm, that makes me feel so much more comfortable. Would you put your faith in such a system?
