Volvos in Denmark will receive real-time alerts from the country's road authorities about accidents and other road hazards that are up to 200 meters ahead, giving them time to react proactively.
Volvo wants to take road safety to the next level by teaming up with government transportation authorities to provide real-time data to warn drivers of trouble ahead.
"We can tell you what is around the next corner," Asa Haglund, who leads the Volvo Cars Safety Center, told Automotive News Europe.
Volvo says that it's a pioneer in providing connected safety technology that alerts drivers of accidents ahead.
"What makes this an industry first is how we connect with the road authority to bring their data into our vehicle and warn you," Asa Haglund, who leads the Volvo Cars Safety Center, told Automotive News Europe.
The automaker, which brought the world the three-point seat belt, will offer its so-called Accident Ahead Alert first in Denmark, with plans to roll out the technology in other European markets this year, the automaker said Thursday.
In Europe, Volvo estimate there are 2.6 million vehicles on the road that could potentially access the system. Out of that total, up to 500,000 Volvos in Europe have opted to turn on the technology.
Connected safety technology has been installed in Volvo's 40, 60 and 90 series models for years, but until now warnings were only communicated between Volvo models in Europe and the U.S. (see timeline, below, right).
What the system lacked until now was access to real-time data from a traffic management center.
"The beauty of this is that it takes in all data available to the road authority. That means it will provide warnings about accidents involving all cars as well as any other road users," she said.
Denmark was chosen to be the first market for Accident Ahead Alert because its road agency has high-quality real time data as well as a wide coverage area.
To take advantage of the system car owners have to give Volvo consent to anonymously share their data.
March 2015: Volvo announces it will offer a slippery road alert warning in its cars. The warning will be shared with other Volvo's via the automaker's cloud.
Nov 2016: Volvo makes Slippery Road Alert and Hazard Light Alert warnings shareable between new XC90, S90 and V90 cars via its cloud.
May 2018: Volvo Cars and Volvo Trucks will share real-time data to alert drivers of nearby hazards.
April 2019: Volvo rolls out its Hazard Light Alert and Slippery Road Alert technology throughout Europe on all models from the 2016 model year.
Nov. 2020: Volvo Cars launches its Hazard Light Alert and Slippery Road Alert in the U.S.
"The only data we are sharing are the location and the type of accident," said Haglund, who took charge of Volvo's safety center last year.
While Volvo wants the system to be flawless, it's more like that it will have a 70 to 80 percent accuracy rate, Haglund said, adding that anything below 70 percent would be unacceptable.
"Otherwise, people will stop trusting the system," she said.
Drivers will only be warned if the accident is roughly 200 meters ahead of their current location.
Haglund said Volvo is ready to expand the feature into other European markets, with an initial focus on countries that are part of the European Data for Road Safety ecosystem. Members include Germany, Austria, the U.K., the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden.
"We share our data with all those partners already," she said. "So, that would be a good guess on where we are focusing and where we will find our next collaboration."
Countries that are not partners in the group include France, Italy, Portugal and all countries in Eastern Europe.
Volvo said it also hopes its rivals will join it in creating an information-sharing partnership to prevent accidents. BMW Group, Volkswagen Group, Mercedes-Benz and Ford are already partners in the European Data for Road Safety.
Volvos have provided alerts about slippery roads to nearby Volvo drivers via the automaker's cloud since 2016.
Haglund said Volvo will not charge to share its data because it believes that preventing accidents should be the goal. She declined to give an estimate on how much it could potentially cost an automaker to add the data-sharing capability to their models.
When asked about rollout plans for the U.S. and China, Volvo said those market are under consideration but no launch timeline has been set.
