More Volvo safety stuff

Just about to embark on a second day of finding out about some of Volvo's new safety technology.

Yesterday was all about Volvo's emerging active safety applications - stuff that helps you to avoid an accident or minimise your speed on impact, rather than protecting you once you are in one.

This included hands-on demonstrations of systems that either warn you about conditions - for example the presence or behaviour or other road users - that may cause an accident, or intervene in order to take over the braking or even steering of the car in such a way that an accident is avoided or takes place at a lower speed. Much of this involved deliberately driving cars at large obstacles and relying on Volvo's technology to avoid a collision. It's actually quite difficult to do this without instinctively braking or steering away, rather than letting the car do the work, even when pedestrians are represented by dummies and other cars by huge inflatables - hitting those is enormous fun, by the way. I'm sure there's a market for some sort of car-based game that uses those.