A great reputation for safety doesn't count for much if your car crashes during a demonstration of its crash-avoidance technology.

That's exactly what happened to Volvo this week as it showed off the collision-avoidance system in the new S60 sedan. With auto journos – including our mates at Wired UK – watching, a new S60 with a test dummy was fired out of the safety tunnel at Volvo's safety center at 30 mph.

It was aimed straight at the back of a parked truck. The collision-avoidance system was supposed to bring the car to a stop safely.

It didn't.

Acccording to Wired UK's Nate Lanxon, it wasn't the car that screwed up, it was the engineer preparing it. Volvo attributes the blunder to a battery problem caused by human error. And to be fair, Lanxon says, the system worked flawlessly the day before.

That doesn't make the snafu any less ironic. Or entertaining. Check out the video at Wired UK.

Photo: Nate Lanxon/Wired UK