Sometimes you just shouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. That was probably the conclusion Thomas Broberg, Senior Safety Advisor at Volvo Cars, came to after a demonstration featuring the new S60 saloon went a little bit pear shaped.
Assembled media and onlookers were supposed to see how the svelte looking S60 could avoid a rear end accident thanks to its collision warning system. As you can see from the image above things didn’t quite go to plan. Fortunately there was only a crash test dummy at the wheel of the car at the time of the 35km/h impact.
You can see a video of the incident below and listen to a red-faced Broberg explain what went wrong. If you can speak Swedish you might even understand him. (As of Monday 10 May the video has been removed from YouTube, an animated GIF below shows what happened). Apparently a battery failed causing the system to remain inactive. Volvo say had a human been at the wheel of the car they would have realised the system failure and had time to take evasive action.
[via World Car Fans]
UPDATE 10 May: It would seem Volvo are keen on removing footage of this oops crash from the interwebz. For now, a new video can be seen at the end of this article sourced from a Swedish news report, which starts off explaining how the system should work.
