- By Jeremy Allston
- Published 10/30/2012
Volvo has helped high profile chauffeur company, Tristar Worldwide, meet its goal of improving customer safety and driving down vehicle-off-road costs by dramatically reducing its at fault accident rates and associated costs in the first six months of trialling Volvo’s revolutionary City Safety technology. Tristar’s newest Volvo estate car V70, as well as the S80 and XC70 models are all fitted with City Safety as standard and help keep its Virgin Atlantic Airways’ Upper Class customers safe when chauffeuring them to and from the airport.
The award winning technology, which acts as an additional pair of eyes in heavy traffic, helping drivers avoid collisions at low speeds, has contributed to a 28% drop in Tristar’s rear impact accidents, where one of its drivers has been at fault – and that’s just since September 2011.
The chauffeur company has been so impressed with City Safety, it believes it has the potential to further decrease its rear impact statistics by up to 50% once all its models are fitted with the technology.
City Safety works by keeping watch on vehicles in front with the help of a laser sensor built into the windscreen at the height of the rear-view mirror. The technology works at speeds of up to 19mph and will make the car automatically brake if the driver does not respond in time when the car in front slows down or stops.
Tristar chauffeurs 115,000 Virgin customers to and from airports annually, and having now successfully trialled Volvo’s City Safety technology, it is also keen to adopt other technology, such as Volvo’s BLIS system.
BLIS is Volvo’s award winning Blind Spot Information System, and works by helping detect vehicles in the rear blind spot on both sides of the car. With changing lanes causing 12.8% of Tristar’s accidents, Tristar is keen to utilise Volvo’s safety technology to further reduce this statistic.
About the Author : Jeremy Allston is writing about the Volvo estate car.
