Volvo the Only Luxury Brand Awarded Five IIHS 2012 Top Safety Picks

GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN – Jan 17, 2012: Volvo's leadership in vehicle safety has been reinforced by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s (IIHS) 2012 Top Safety Pick awards.

Five Volvo models – the C30, S60, S80, XC60 and XC90 – earned a Top Safety Pick award.

The Top Safety Pick awards recognise vehicles that do the best job of protecting occupants in front, side, rollover, and rear crashes – the four most common types of collisions*:

Frontal crashworthiness evaluations are based on the results of a 64 km/h frontal offset crash test.

Side evaluations are based on a vehicle’s performance in a crash test in which the side of a vehicle is struck by a barrier moving at 50 km/h. The barrier represents the front end of an SUV.

To earn a good rating for rollover protection, the car roof must withstand a force of four times the vehicle's weight in a strength-to-weight ratio test.

And the rear crash protection is rated using a dummy that measures forces on the neck. This test simulates a collision in which a stationary vehicle is struck in the rear at 32 km/h.

"The risk of being involved in an accident or being injured in one of our latest car models has been reduced by more than two thirds compared with a Volvo from the 1970s,” said Thomas Broberg, senior safety advisor, Volvo Car Corporation.

“Now, we keep on moving towards our safety vision that nobody should die or suffer serious injuries in a new Volvo car by the year 2020,” added Mr Broberg.

Outstanding U.S. NCAP rating
Volvo Car Corporation's dedication to car safety has been recognised in several recent studies.

The Volvo XC60 is the only SUV / crossover with a IIHS Top Safety Pick and an overall 5 star U.S. NCAP safety rating. In the 2010 test, the XC60 received 5 stars in all individual crash tests, including 5 stars for the driver and 5 stars for the passenger in the frontal collision as well as 5 stars in both side tests.

Auto brake results in fewer accidents
The IIHS study of insurance claims involving a Volvo XC60 shows that Volvo’s groundbreaking City Safety technology, which features automatic breaking at low speeds, reduced the cost of personal injury claims by 51 per cent - while vehicle repair costs were lowered by more than 20 per cent.

In addition, another IIHS report found City Safety led to a reduction in the incidents of a rear-end collisions by 22 per cent, which is in-line with the findings of a similar study by the Swedish insurance company, Volvia. Volvia’s research showed that Volvo cars equipped with automatic braking are involved in 22 per cent fewer rear end accidents than cars without auto brake.