Volvo accidentally smashes new car in safety demo

Oh dear. Where’s Keyboard Cat when you need him?

At a demonstration of Volvo’s new collision warning system in Sweden this week, Wired got first-hand experience of what happens when it goes badly wrong — and we’ve got the video below to prove it.

The new Volvo S60, due for release later this year, was fired out of Volvo’s testing tunnel at around 30MPH, and the collision detection system should have kicked in, bringing the car automatically to a halt before hitting the truck in its path.

It didn’t. Instead, the brand new car ploughed into the back of the truck in front of us, and indeed the world’s press who had gathered in Sweden to see the collision detection system in action.

To be fair, we had seen it working perfectly earlier in the day, and we’ll be writing about that soon. This pre-series car suffered as the result of a human error in preparation of the crash, Volvo later claimed, and that had a human been driving, he or she would have noticed the system was not operating correctly. The technical reason for the fail concerned a problem with the car’s battery.

Either way, it was extremely amusing, although we’re sure Volvo doesn’t think so. Of the many deliberate crashes we saw at Volvo’s safety centre in Sweden, this was the only demonstration that wasn’t supposed to crash.

Ready to watch? Head over to Wired’s video to see the accidental crash in all its glory!

Stay tuned to Wired to see what happens when the system operates correctly.