Volvo Cars, a leader in automotive safety, is teaming up with top Swedish sports and safety brand POC for a series of world-first crash tests of bike helmets against cars as part of a ground-breaking new research project that aims to further protect cyclists.
The partnership is the latest example of Volvo Cars’ leading position in safety development and its ambition to improve road safety for all through a collaboration and knowledge-sharing approach.
Accidents between bikes and vehicles can often lead to serious injury or death, which is why Volvo Cars has a clear strategy to avoid these types of accidents completely with the help of active safety technologies.
Cyclist detection with full auto brake uses the car’s cameras and radars to detect cyclists, warn the driver of an imminent collision and apply the brakes if further action is needed. It is a development of Volvo Cars’ automatic emergency braking and pedestrian-detection systems, in line with its safety vision.
The Volvo-POC research project consists of a number of specially designed crash tests at the famous Volvo Cars safety research facilities in Gothenburg, Sweden, and is part of a wider research project to understand the types of long-term injuries sustained by cyclists.
During these tests, POC bike helmets are worn by crash dummy heads mounted on a testing rig, from where they are launched towards different areas of the bonnet of a static Volvo car, at different speeds and angles for various measurements.