Seat belts save lives!
Vehicle and driver safety is taken very seriously at Volvo Trucks – and so it should be! After the company’s Accident Research Team produced a report on truck accidents in Europe, which revealed that fatigue and inattentiveness are behind most incidents, the vehicle manufacturer is now advocating that truck drivers need to go back to basics when it comes to keeping safe – and it all starts with wearing a seat belt.
The Volvo Trucks European Accident Research and Safety Report revealed that 90 percent of all truck accidents stem entirely, or partly, from the human error factor and that only 0,5 percent of truck drivers involved in serious accidents were under the influence of alcohol. The corresponding figure for accidents involving passenger cars varies between 15 and 20 percent.
“Access to facts about accidents is immensely valuable for our ongoing safety work,” says Carl Almqvist, traffic and product safety director at Volvo Trucks. “It helps us choose the right priorities in our product development.”
He adds: “We have further enhanced safety levels in our latest truck models with a range of support systems that improve visibility and alert the driver, or focus the driver’s attention, if something isn’t right.”
Thanks to safer vehicles, improved infrastructure and safer behaviour on the road, the number of fatal accidents on European roads has dropped continuously since the early 1900s. But Almqvist explains that far more lives would be saved if more people used their seat belts – something that not even half of the truck drivers on European roads do.
“As long as people are injured in road accidents, we will continue to pursue higher safety levels,” says Almqvist. “Firstly by making our trucks safer for drivers and other road users and, secondly, by spreading knowledge that impacts patterns of behaviour and by persuading more truck drivers to use the seat belt.”
We invite you to check out the YouTube video below, to see how Volvo Trucks’ new active safety system: Collision Warning with Emergency Brake can avoid rear end collision.
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