Ghana's Premier Automotive Blog

This is officially the second safety system demonstration in as many "Look at this!" announcements that has gone horribly wrong for Volvo. That's right, two. The first one was back in May and led to a new S60 estate crushing itself into the back of a truck.
This latest mishap occurred during a media demonstration to Australian journalists in Europe.

Now that the known-as-safe Volvo brand is officially owned by the Chinese, is this a sign of things to come?

The mechanism in question is part of Volvo's pedestrian avoidance technology, which makes use of cameras and radar in the nose of the vehicle to control the brakes and stability control system in order to reduce driver/pedestrian injuries. The object that the system was meant to detect was Bob the Dummy; as you can see in the vids, it didn't detect a damn thing.

That's not to say the system is terrible; after all is said and done, it worked 75% of the time. Of the twelve runs, only one ended with Bob getting the full force of the Volvo unleashed on him, with the other two still being less than perfect. Some of the blame has been placed on a camera that doesn't work well in low-light conditions (infrared / night vision, guys?).

Volvo's Jonas Tisell, Active Safety Systems manager, told journalists, "The failure of the test was due to the dummy not being set up properly, therefore it did not give an echo enough for the system. So the dummy was not relevant in this situation." So...blame it on the dummy? And "not relevant"? How does being to blame (according to Volvo) translate as irrelevant?

More like Volvo just got caught with its pants down...again.

By Phil Alex

Via: Drive and Autoblog.com

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A team of Japanese researchers have developed an airbag system for the exterior of the car, rather than the interior, with the purpose of protecting pedestrians.
Via CrunchGear:

"The airbags deflate rapidly upon impact, just like conventional airbags, to soften the effects of a crash for pedestrians. The prototype car equipped with iSAVE that you can see on the pic above was shown earlier this week and is said to be the first of its kind. iSAVE can be used with electric cars only.

The research team behind the airbags says it expects to sell up to 50 units by year end for 3-wheeled cars before fully commercializing them in 2011 for four-wheeled vehicles. The iSAVE system for 4-wheeled cars will likely be priced at $17,800."


Source: WonderHowTo

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I normally choose to do long distance road travels ie: Accra-Kumasi, Sunyani-Accra at night. I use what is called the ''sleeper'', that is we start the journey around 10pm and get to our destinations at dawn around 3:30am. So you can sleep a bit, then re freshen up for your duties or ''ronnings'' in the morning. Yeah, so basically that's how i normally do my long distance road journeys. Well last Thursady was no different, i was in Accra on Thursday dawn, did my usual ''ronnings'' that same morning, and was bound to be in Sunyani Friday morning for an important meeting. So i was done with all my ''ronnings'' by 6:30pm and had to head for the Neoplan station in Kwame Nkrumah circle to board a ''sleeper'' to Sunyani for my appointment on Friday morning. so after all the usual heavy traffic in Accra central, i finally get to the Neoplan Station at exactly 8:30pm, i started shivering, because i know the buses normally start their journeys at 8:00pm, and here i was, 30 go minutes late I finally get to where the buses park, and the bus bound for Sunyani is packed with passengers, so i asked the bus conductor, "Massa is the bus full"??? He replies saying, "boss, one space more left, its GHc13!!" so i ask him, ''where is it''? he's says here...right to the door where the bus conductors normally sit, if there's one on the bus. At first my heart skipped a beat, but i had no other option. Well i don't really know how to describe my seating position to you, but i know the readers out there who board these buses (ADB, Stanbic and Yutong) know exactly what in talking about. so i get in my seat, strap on my seat belt and whisper a prayer to my maker. By 8:55pm our night journey to Sunyani had began. Well since i was not so comfortable at where i was seated, i tried not to dose off, but as hard as i tried i just couldn't help to take a nap, but i was quickly awoken as i was moved forward because the driver apparently jammed the brakes and swerved to the left of the road to avoid hitting a taxi that crossed as, and i could hear that squeaking and hissing sound of the bus' air brakes plus the numerous insults that followed. Well just then, i said to myself, what if buses had anti-lock brakes, just as cars do, and even drum brakes will do. I don't really know how the ''air brakes'' work, but after googling it out, i had a slight idea of how it works, so i have decided to share that here http://auto.howstuffworks.com/auto-parts/brakes/brake-types/air-brake.htm . After feeding my brains with knowledge on how this works i asked myself that same question, can't these car manufacturers develop a new and more advanced braking system for buses and trucks?? All these ABS/EBS found on cars, can't they develop the same technology on buses and trucks?? I think i they did, it will help to save a lot more lives on our roads, i dare say that these buses and trucks are the No.1 causes of accidents on our roads, especially at night, even though what prompted me to write this wasn't the fault on our bus driver, but along the journey, i saw bus and truck drivers dosing off, others too driving reckless and so on, if they get an ABS/EBS i think it will help them stop much more quicker and save lives too. Anyways if anyone knows of such technology in buses and trucks, please let know ook.


Written and Edited by: Yaw Baah-Nuakoh™

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