Category: Volvo

Volvo introduces new service that tells you what to do after an accident

Volvo Car Accident Advisor app

Volvo just released a new mobile service designed to guide you through what to do after a car crash. It's a simple bit of tech, but might prove helpful if you weren't up to speed on what to do after a light brush up with another vehicle.

The service is called Car Accident Advisor. After confirming to Volvo Customer Care that you are uninjured and not in need of emergency services, you'll get a text to your phone that links you to this service. Assuming you have an internet connection, the application will proceed to guide you through the necessary steps one should take after getting into an accident.



Volvo says the app will prompt the driver to capture photos and write down facts about the accident. It asks if other vehicles are involved, determines your exact location and allows you to pinpoint the areas of the car that were damaged. After doing that "paperwork," Volvo then allows you to submit it in a nicely organized report directly to your insurer. This allows you to get your insurance claim in the process right away, hopefully speeding up the entire process. The last guided step Volvo offers is a body shop/service finder. It lists approved Volvo shops and can arrange a tow to those shops, so you can theoretically get a quick start on repairs.

The benefits for someone unprepared are obvious, but this could be handy for experienced drivers, too, since an accident can be pretty disorienting. Volvo says the service will work on all model year 2015.5 or newer Volvos. If you have a Volvo older than that, you can trigger the service manually with a phone call to Volvo Car Customer Care. There is no cost to using the Accident Advisor either way.

Volvo expands connected car alerts across Europe

Slippery Road Alert demonstration on Volvo V60

Volvo is expanding its connected-vehicle safety technology across Europe that lets Volvo automobiles share signals whenever one vehicle switches on its hazard lights to highlight potential obstructions, slippery roads or other dangers. The company last year rolled out the service in Sweden and Norway on its 90 Series passenger cars and Volvo Trucks.

Next week, the Hazard Light Alert and Slippery Road Alert will become available to all Volvo drivers in Europe, the automaker says. They'll be standard on all new 2020 models and can be retrofitted on certain models built on Volvo's Scalable Product Architecture or Compact Modular Architecture going back to the 2016 model year.

The Hazard Light Alert sends a signal to all nearby Volvo cars connected to the cloud service whenever a driver in an equipped Volvo switches on the hazard lights, warning other drivers to help avoid potential accidents, particularly on blind corners or hill crests. The Slippery Road Alert anonymously collects information about road surfaces from cars further ahead and warns approaching drivers about slippery conditions before they reach them.

It's the latest step for the brand synonymous with safety to make roads safer. Volvo last month announced it will limit the top speed of all its cars from 2020 onward to 180 kph, or 112 mph. It also said it plans to deploy cameras and other in-car sensors that can monitor the driver's state and attentiveness to prevent distracted or drunk driving.

Of course, the broadening of these technologies for now only go as far as fellow Volvo drivers. So the company announced that for the first time, it's making what it has learned about safety over more than 40 years of research, segmented by decade, publicly available in a digital library for other automakers to use and replicate.

Volvo will limit top speed on all its vehicles to 112 mph

Volvo V60 gauges

Volvo has announced that it will limit the top speed of its cars to 180 kph, or 112 mph. The carmaker says it wants to send "a strong signal about the dangers of speeding," and from 2020, no Volvo cars can go faster than that. The limit is part of Volvo's Vision 2020, which aims for zero road deaths or severe injuries in a Volvo by 2020. Polestar models were not mentioned.

"Volvo is a leader in safety: We always have been and we always will be," said Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive. "Because of our research, we know where the problem areas are when it comes to ending serious injuries and fatalities in our cars. And while a speed limitation is not a cure-all, it's worth doing if we can even save one life."

Volvo's flagship XC90 SUV currently has a top speed of 131 mph.

Samuelsson, speaking ahead of the Geneva Motor Show, said it is unlikely to meet the Vision 2020 goal without additional measures to address driver behavior.

"We've realized that to close the gap we have to focus more on the human factors," Samuelsson told Reuters. Volvo did not elaborate on the data but said its passenger fatalities were already well below the industry average before the goal was announced in 2007.

In addition to the speed cap, Volvo plans to deploy technology using cameras that monitor the driver's state and attentiveness to prevent people driving while distracted or intoxicated, two other big factors in accidents, Samuelsson said.

There's also nothing preventing these Volvos from being driven at 60 mph in a 30 mph zone yet, except for proposed EU-mandated automatic speed limiters. But Volvo is also looking into limiting lower speeds with technology. Volvo's statement says: "Apart from limiting top speeds, the company is also investigating how a combination of smart speed control and geofencing technology could automatically limit speeds around schools and hospitals in future." In other words, if drivers cannot be trusted to make the decision to slow down, the cars will do that for them.

It has to be said the 112 mph limit is somewhat peculiar. Even if Japanese home market cars have had the same speed limit implemented for ages, there aren't that many countries where you can legally pass 110 mph. European highway limits are usually around 75-80 mph at maximum, and crashing at 90-100 is already dangerous enough. It feels like Volvo has set a limit no one would ever reach in normal driving, except perhaps on the German Autobahn. Samuelsson conceded that the limit could be a turnoff for German buyers.

That also brings us to an another aspect of the matter: which more strongly affects sales, a message that a manufacturer voluntarily limits its cars from reaching a certain speed, or that the cars are guaranteed to attain a given speed that few buyers ever reach?

"We cannot please everybody, but we think we will attract new customers," the CEO said, recalling that the roll-out of three-point seat belts pioneered by Volvo in 1959 had initially been criticized by some as intrusive.

"I think Volvo customers in Germany will appreciate that we're doing something about safety," he said.

Material from Reuters was used in this report.

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