“By 2020, nobody shall be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo.”

Nobody. According to the Vision 2020 program of the car manufacturer, that is. Exactly 10 days before the Google driverless car prototype was revealed, Volvo declared in an interview it is aiming for autonomous driving Volvos by 2017 as part of their ambition of becoming completely crash-free.

It seems like a car you would want to drive, it is a mission you could hardly disagree with. On the contrary. It is most probably the reason I drive a Volvo today and drove one before. And they are far ahead on competition. It is about matching today’s technology and driver’s behaviour. Volvo understood very well at the start of their — at the time — bold statement that to make cars crash-free it is about making up for human errors. And Volvo does that with all its current efforts: alerting when you are driving too close to the vehicle in front of you, first with a dimmed light, later with sound. When coming too close, brake pads are put closer to the rotor for faster impact on the slightest driver reaction, winning about half a second and avoiding a possible collision. A beautiful philosophy and a clear advantage over the competition that is aiming for autonomous cars, putting their efforts on technology. Period. Without the proper driver understanding knowing that — according to Volvo — driver behavior is a contributing factor in more than 90% of all accidents. Autonomous vehicles is what could mean a major leap in their vision, as human error can be completely avoided. Driverless cars are far from new. Since 2004 the DARPA Grand Challenge tests autonomous cars in a desert race. None of the cars finished the 240 km race that year, but in 2005 some did. Mostly University teams. Audi, one of the first car manufacturers, has been conducting autonomous car experiments for years, driving up Pikes Peak, a curvey road to the top of the Pikes Peak mountain top. That was 2010. Much has evolved but Volvo still takes the cake. With their interview, they are raising the bar for safety & overall car manufacturing once again.