Volvo lets cars warn each other about slippery roads and dangerous situations
Volvo will allow its cars to communicate with each other about dangerous situations on the road from this week. As soon as a Volvo car activates the hazard lights, all supported Volvo cars in the vicinity receive a signal. The cars will also inform each other about slippery roads.
As of this week, cars that support the technology will communicate with each other via mobile networks about the situation on the road. Two systems will be released: Hazard Light Alert and Slippery Road Alert. The first system works with the car’s hazard lights. As soon as these are switched on, all supported Volvo cars ‘nearby’ are notified. According to Volvo, this system would be especially useful in blind turns and over a hilltop.
The Slippery Road Alert refers to slippery roads. For example, cars with this system record anonymous information about the road surface conditions. The cars share this information with other road users. In this way, Volvo cars can inform the driver about the slipperiness of the road surface, based on information from previous cars that have just driven there. The system can therefore warn drivers if they reach a slippery area.
The car manufacturer has been testing the systems in Sweden and Norway since 2016 with 90 series cars. Trucks with the systems are also on the road in those two countries. The systems will be released for cars across Europe this week. All cars with 2020 as model year receive the system as standard. Cars that have 2016 as a model year at the earliest based on the spa or cma platforms can have the systems retrofitted. This includes the Volvo XC90 and V90 models, for example.
Volvo believes that the two systems will make roads and cars safer for road users. Volvo is asking other car manufacturers to join in the sharing of anonymized traffic information to improve road safety. Earlier this year, Volvo announced several measures to improve road safety. For example, from 2020 all Volvos will be limited to 180 km/h and they will have cameras ‘and other sensors’ to monitor the driver. This allows the vehicle to intervene if a drunk or distracted driver is at risk of an accident resulting in serious injury or death.