Product responsibility means that manufacturers look closely at the effects their products may have on the health and safety of the customer – from the development of the product concept via production and delivery across to maintenance, disposal and re-use or recycling. For automobile manufacturers this means above all doing everything possible to ensure that their vehicles are as safe as possible.
Quality
Safety is initially a question of product quality. We ensure this across the entire value added chain, with many teams taking care of individual operational sections – ranging from the quality of bought-in parts via material quality and processing right across to the quality of the overall vehicle.
Advanced Driver Assistance Systems
However, vehicle safety is also a question of innovation, because advanced driver assistance systems help the driver to identify hazards earlier and to avoid dangerous situations from the very beginning.
Examples of a wide range of driver assistance systems are our ACC automatic distance control function and systems for keeping the vehicle in its lane (“Lane assist”) and for changing lanes (“Side assist”) and many more.
These active safety systems are effectively supplemented by optimised passive safety, prime examples of which are rigid occupant compartments and specific crumple zones in the front and rear sections of the vehicle together with an interior which is optimised for maximum crash safety.
Accident Research
Volkswagen increases road safety not just by making safe cars, but also by active accident research. We reconstruct and analyse accidents, which provides us with valuable data for vehicle safety. These findings have a direct influence on vehicle development, as a current example shows.
Statistics indicate that every fourth collision leads to a further collision – and it is exactly for this purpose that Volkswagen has developed its multi-collision brake. By reducing the vehicle's speed to 10 km/h after a collision has been identified this braking system can often avoid or at least reduce the severity of follow-up collisions.
In addition Volkswagen actively promotes road safety by participating worldwide in projects aimed at raising awareness of safety aspects among drivers.
Article source: www.volkswagen.com