Volvo safety study: injury risk for women and men across five decades
Volvo Cars compared real crashes involving cars from five decades. Driver injury risk fell 79%, and the reduction reached 88% for women.
When Volvo cars built in 2010–2019 were compared with models from 1970–1979, the risk of at least moderately severe injury for belted drivers was 79% lower. Among women, the reduction reached 88%. In cars from the 2010–2019 group, injury risk for women and men was almost the same.
Volvo Cars reported the results on October 8, 2026. The study itself was published in the proceedings of the 2026 ESV conference. Authors Lotta Jakobsson and Thomas Broberg analysed Volvo cars from five decades of production, including a comparison between 1970–1979 and 2010–2019 models, using crash statistics from Sweden.
The work is based on a database Volvo has maintained since 1970. Over that period, specialists collected information from more than 50,000 real-world crashes involving Volvo vehicles and more than 80,000 occupants. For this analysis, the researchers selected belted drivers and passengers aged 13 and older. Injuries at MAIS2+ level — moderate or more severe — were counted, including fractures and concussions. Minor bruising and pain were excluded.
The analysis was not limited to frontal impacts. The sample included side and rear collisions, rollovers, road departures, glancing impacts, crashes with large animals and multi-event crashes involving two or more impacts.
Volvo also examined protection for rear-seat passengers. In the analysed sample, belted rear occupants had comparable, and in some cases even better, protection than people in the front. The authors note that the rear-seat sample was smaller, so the confidence intervals are wider. The results are linked to decades of improvements in body structure, seat belts and other restraint systems.
Volvo stresses that safety development must account for differences in height, weight, body shape and seating position. That is why the company uses not only standard crash-test dummies but also computer models of the human body.
This approach is developing alongside electronic crash-avoidance systems. For example, the Volvo EX60, EX90 and ES90 support Connected Safety functions that warn about crashes, large animals and road works. The published study, however, focuses mainly on protecting people during a collision rather than preventing the crash itself.
Comparing cars from different decades does not mean that every modern Volvo provides identical protection in every kind of impact. The results apply to the specific sample of vehicles, crash types and belted occupants studied. The paper also does not provide a direct safety ranking of Volvo against other manufacturers.
Since 2019, Volvo has published results and materials from its long-running safety research through the Equal Vehicles for All initiative so other carmakers, researchers and regulators can use them. The underlying crash database itself is not public. The new work shows how decades of real-world crash analysis can improve passive safety while accounting for differences between occupants.