Crash-test dummies
Volvo takes its safety record seriously and has been at the vanguard of new technologies geared to reducing accidents. But accidents will happen, and often at the most embarrassing moments. Twice in 2010 alone Volvo has gathered the world’s media to show off new safety features. Twice they’ve gone spectacularly wrong. The company was showing off the crash-avoidance system in its S60 when engineers fired the car out of a testing tunnel towards the back of a stationary lorry. The car was supposed to foresee the impending collision, but a problem between the control system and the battery meant the shiny new vehicle ploughed into the back of the juggernaut.
Undeterred, the company followed the S60 test with a display of a pedestrian avoidance system, which predictably ended with the simulated deaths of the walking public. Although the system, which uses radar sensors and a camera to spot pedestrians and instigate an emergency stop, did halt the vehicle for nine out of 12 dummies, three others were sent flying.
Where will it end? Well if you ask security experts, the trend for smarter cars with ever more onboard computing power means it won’t be Volvos you need to worry about, but anyone bearing a grudge.
Researchers at the University of Washington recently hacked into several car systems using a variety of attack vectors and said they could “adversarially control a wide range of automotive functions and completely ignore driver input, including disabling the brakes or selectively braking individual wheels on demand”.
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