By Staff Reporter

In the interest of road safety for all, Volvo Cars is for the first time making its safety knowledge easily accessible in a central digital library which it urges the car industry to use. It is not the first time that Volvo has shared safety innovations with the rest of the car industry. Volvo is said to have done this with the three-point safety belt which it developed back in 1959.

Codenamed Project E.V.A., the initiative embodies and celebrates sixty years’ worth of sharing research into car safety with the world by Volvo, but also highlights a fundamental issue with inequality in terms of car safety development.

Project E.V.A. illustrates, based on Volvo Cars’ own research data as well as several other studies, that women are more at risk for some injuries in a car crash. Differences in for example anatomy and neck strength between the average man and woman mean that women are more likely to suffer from whiplash injuries.

More recently, Volvo Cars’s research data showed an issue with lumbar spine, or lower back, injuries across all people, regardless of gender and size. Further analysis and study made Volvo focus on the dangers of run-off road injuries. The resulting technology, introduced first on the XC90 and now on all SPA-based cars, is an energy absorber in the seats that goes far beyond what is a regulatory requirement for car makers.

Kudos to Volvo for this safety initiative.