Volvo puts 1,000 test cars to use

Slippery road warning shared with other cars

Surprises when driving are what you most drivers want to avoid and with this in mind a joint project is being undertaken to help motorists avoid such situations, writes Trish Whelan.

Volvo Cars, the Swedish Transport Administration and the Norwegian Public Roads Administration are working together on a project to enable cars to share information about conditions that relate to road friction, such as icy patches.

The information will be shared through a cloud-based network - a revolutionary approach to improving traffic safety. And with the test fleet now expanding from about 50 to 1,000, the project is moving rapidly towards its goal of making the technology available to customers within a few years' time.

They have developed a slippery-road alert which notifies drivers about icy patches and contributes to making winter road maintenance more efficient; a hazard-light alert which will tell drivers if another vehicle in the area has its hazard lights on, is another such development, says Erik Israelsson, Project Leader Cooperative ITS (Intelligent Transport System) at Volvo Cars.

With the technology now in place, the testing and validation phase is now about to begin. It will include two big Scandinavian cities, Gothenburg and Oslo, which they say will give a more complete picture of how the system will work in real winter traffic conditions.

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