Volvo Is Utilizing Connected Car Technology To Improve Safety

Volvo is taking the abilities of connected cars and finding new ways to utilize the technology to improve driving safety. At Mobile World Congress, the Swedish car company revealed its trial program that is intended to cut down on the number of accidents that are caused by poor weather and damaged road conditions.

Volvo is launching a pilot program in Sweden and Norway that utilizes “road status” technology to anonymously share road condition data to the Volvo Cloud. The project is related to the brand’s core promise of safety, with the concept being that sharing car data will save lives, time and taxpayer’s money.

“Imagine a world where road status data collected by cars is shared with other road users and with local authorities through a connected car cloud such as the Volvo Cloud,” said Volvo Group CIO, Klas Bendrik. “Volvo Cars is working on realizing such a future scenario.”

One of the early features is slippery road alerts, which will notify drivers about icy patches, as well as improving the efficiency of winter road maintenance. Another feature is hazard light alerts, which informs drivers when another vehicle in the area has its hazard lights on.

“If a Volvo car detects that it is slippery on a certain stretch of road, for example, it can make other connected cars aware of this via the Volvo Cloud so they are forewarned,” explained Bendrik.

In addition to providing safety information to drivers, this technology can be used by municipalities to optimize traffic lights and speed limits, and to re-route traffic based on real-time data. The potential for improved safety derived from real-time weather warnings and emergency road condition information make Volvo’s project a very interesting test, which could make a significant difference in the driving world of the future. In addition to the aforementioned uses, Bendrik hinted at the possibility of “smart cities” using connected street lights to illuminate slippery road sections in another color when they are detected by a connected car. Clearly, Volvo has many innovative concepts for how this technology could be applied in the future.

This trial is part of Volvo’s “Connected Safety” initiative, which the company sees as a key future growth area in the auto industry. Volvo has stated that auto makers have the potential to deliver real benefits to society by democratizing anonymized car data, and that enabling cars with connected technology is a key component of expanding the reach of the Internet of Things.

Bendrik explains that the new tool is not entirely unlike Waze, the crowd-sourced traffic data service. However, one primary difference is that Volvo’s initiative utilizes automatic communication from the car’s sensors to the cloud, instead of relying on individuals to use their smartphones to relay the information.

To begin, the service will only be available in specific Volvo vehicles in Sweden and Norway, but Bendrik expects that the program could eventually be expanded, and the company envisions a time when it could communicate to all properly equipped cars, regardless of the make.

“We are leading this development, but the industry is still young,” said Bendrik. “Over time, other car makers have to be involved to make it more useful.”