If the rumours that had Volvo distancing itself from Ford Motor Co. in summer were true, the blue oval would have made it in time to grab hold of the latest budding technology of the Göteborg company: the City Safety introduced on the new XC60 at Geneva.

The new gadget, management’s focus during the presentation, prevents crashes at low speed between the equipped vehicle and another moving in the same direction. The preventive action on the brakes engages on the basis of information from a front radar and an acoustic signal averts the driver. It’s an old emphasis on Volvo’s safety tradition.

Gerry Keaney, company vicepresident and director of sales and marketing, reportedly revealed to Automative News that City Safety will not only be adopted on the entire range, but will also be considered for some model Fords. Keaney underlined that a different choice would have been surprising: “Usually the latest finds in technology have their debut on premium cars and are then deployed on large-volume cars after a certain period. It would be strange if City Safety were never assembled on a Ford”.

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The Toyota iQ concept shown at the latest Frankfurt auto show will soon be a production car that will feature several interesting innovations. A really striking one is a new kind of airbag which is designed to protect the rear seat passenger from rear impacts, as revealed by Hiroshi Nakajima, chief designer of the iQ concept in an interview with News.

The Toyota iQ concept features an unusual 3+1 seating configuration, with the back seat positioned just 30 cm from the rear window, in order to obtain more space for the back passenger’s legs. This arrangement required improved protection from rear impacts, to get good results in crash-tests.

Nakajima states that this rear-airbag system enables the iQ to get the five-star EuroNCAP rating for the passenger protection.

Via | MotorAuthority

Continue reading: Toyota: new rear-impact airbags for iQ concept

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A couple of weeks ago Mercedes Benz had a big embarassment when its collision avoidance system failed to work spectacularly on TV.

Now, it seems that the incident was due to bungling while trying to fake the demonstration on behalf of Mercedes engineers and an Auto Bild journalist, since the engineers knew that the system wouldn’t work.

Wow. Now, the Auto Bild journalist has been fired, and Mercedes is in for an even bigger embarassment.

Continue reading: Mercedes double-embarassment

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A “road education” video about all that should not be done on a highway. All that is missing is the expected gruesome ending, pure luck on behalf of the drivers.

The video is shot from a BMW M5 racing after an Audi RS4 (old model) on a Russian 4 lane highway, in heavy traffic, complete with a slalom between lorries. Things to do only while driving a gaming console …. [Via Autoblog.nl].

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It’s impressive, how well the safety cell of the Smart car resists to a 110 km/h crash against a concrete barrier, in this video. It’s even possible to open the doors (the right side one can even be re-closed) [Via Jalopnik]

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Euroncap has announced the latest crash test results: 5 stars for the Toyota Yaris and the Fiat Croma.

The Yaris got 5 stars for adult occupants protection, 3 stars for child occupants protection and 2 stars for pedestrian protection.

The Croma got 5 stars for adult occupants protection, 3 stars for child occupants protection, and only one star pedestrian protection.

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After the catastrophic results in the crash-test conducted by ADAC (see following video), the European importer has announced that the Landwind chinese SUV will be modified: all Landwinds will be reinforced, so that occupants will be safer in case of a crash. It remains to be seen whether the price of a Landwind, its main selling point, will get still higher (it has already climbed from the attention getting 16.000 € initially announced).

The importer also accused the german car club ADAC of conducting tests that did not respect legal standards, and has promised that it will take legal action if ADAC doesn’t withdraw its conclusions (zero stars) [Via Jalopnik].

Continue reading: Landwind - safety measures and crash test video

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