Slashdot Mirror
Volvo To Add In-Car Sensors To Prevent Drunk Driving (reuters.com)
Volvo is installing cameras and sensors in its cars from the early 2020s, monitoring drivers for signs of being drunk or distracted and intervening to prevent accidents. These new safety features come a couple weeks after the automaker announced it will limit the top speed to 112mph on all its new cars from 2020 to help reduce the number of accidents. Reuters reports: Head of R&D Henrik Green said cameras will be installed on all Volvo models built on its SPA2 platform for larger cars, starting from the XC90 SUV in the early part of the next decade, before being added to smaller cars built on its CMA platform. Volvo said intervention if the driver is found to be drunk, tired or distracted by checking a mobile phone - among the biggest factors in accidents - could involve limiting the car's speed, alerting the Volvo on Call assistance service, or slowing down and parking the car.
CEO Hakan Samuelsson said that while the strategies meant Volvo might lose some customers keen on high speeds, it also opened opportunities to win parents who wanted to buy the safest car to carry their children. "It would be easy to say that people can do whatever they like but we feel we have a responsibility to do this. Maybe people will see us as 'Big Brother,' but if we save some lives then it's worth it," he told journalists. Volvo also said it would introduce Care Key on cars from 2021, allowing buyers to set speed limits, and that it was talking to insurers to offer better terms for users of these safety features.
CEO Hakan Samuelsson said that while the strategies meant Volvo might lose some customers keen on high speeds, it also opened opportunities to win parents who wanted to buy the safest car to carry their children. "It would be easy to say that people can do whatever they like but we feel we have a responsibility to do this. Maybe people will see us as 'Big Brother,' but if we save some lives then it's worth it," he told journalists. Volvo also said it would introduce Care Key on cars from 2021, allowing buyers to set speed limits, and that it was talking to insurers to offer better terms for users of these safety features.
If you don't drink you won't want to pay for a needless in car breathalyzer....why would you ? If you do drink the last thing you want is your car to decide you have had 'too much', whatever that is. Can't see who, if anyone, is the audience here. While I loathe the right wing description of "virtue signaling" is that where Volvo is going ? Back when there were two swedish car companies, they used to say "one for the right lane (volvo) and one for the left lane (saab). Looks like the right lane is now a maiden aunt who reads Streetsblog and is writing letters against legal cannabis and about speeders on her block to the local legislators....
Volvo's technology is designed to reduce crashes. Not accidents.
An accident is "an event that happens by chance or that is without apparent or deliberate cause."
If someone is driving drunk, or driving distracted, and they crash, it's no accident. By defaulting to the term "accident", we are implicitly absolving drivers of heavy machines of their responsibility to operate them safely and competently.
https://www.crashnotaccident.c...