Volvo drops new cars to help rescue services save lives

It is the most extreme crash test ever executed by Volvo Cars, and a crucial one. Extrication specialists often use crashed cars to hone their life-saving skills. To allow rescue services to prepare for any possible crash scenario and to simulate the forces that erupt in the most extreme crashes, beyond what can be simulated with ordinary crash testing, Volvo recently took equally extreme measures. For the first time, it dropped several new cars multiple times from a crane, from a height of 30 metres, as can be seen in the video below.

This approach helped create enough damage to adequately simulate the damage found in the most extreme crash scenarios: think of single-car accidents at very high speed, accidents whereby a car hits a truck at high speed, or accidents whereby a car takes a severe hit from the side. In such situations, people inside the car are likely to be in a critical condition. Therefore the priority is to get people out of the car and to a hospital as quickly as possible, using hydraulic rescue tools known in the industry as ‘jaws of life’. Extrication specialists often talk about the golden hour: they need to release and get a patient to the hospital within one hour after the accident has happened.

All findings from the crashes and the resulting extrication work will be collected in an extensive research report. This report will be made available free of use to rescue workers, allowing them to benefit from the findings and further develop their life-saving capabilities.

Usually, rescue workers get their training vehicles from scrapyards. But these cars are often up to two decades old. And in terms of steel strength, complicated electrical propulsion systems and components, safety cage construction and overall durability, there is a vast difference between modern cars and those built fifteen to twenty years ago. This makes it crucial for rescue workers to constantly update their familiarity with newer car models and review their processes, in order to develop new extrication techniques.

There is another possibility in training with modern vehicles: using the Moditech VR Training App! This is an application in which you as an user can experience three scenarios with modern vehicles. In the scenarios, you can work with the vehicles involved in an interactive way, in combination with the Crash Recovery System (CRS). It is a new technology developed specially to make practicing with the CRS easier and to train with the latest vehicles without having to buy them. An effective way to cut costs. It also makes practicing independent from time and location. More info via this link.

Crash Recovery System – Know what’s inside, see what to do!