Volvo Studio Talks - A million more

On October 15, the Italian Traffic Police took part in a special event promoted by Volvo Cars. It is a brand-new format that involves the five existing Volvo Studios: Milan, Stockholm, New York, Tokyo and Warsaw. Based on simultaneous interactions of different Volvo Studios across continents, “Volvo Studio Talks” are cross-cultural and cross-industry conversations on important aspects of road safety. It is a way to promote the dialogue between different entities, based on a simple but strong conviction: only the comparison between different perspectives can create progress, innovation and success.

For the first Volvo Studio Talk, the focus was on the safety of the whole family, especially of children. The plan was to start from the basic rules for safety for the little ones in the car: from each one of the Volvo Studios, a speaker fed the conversation.

Malin Ekholm, the Vice President at Volvo Cars Safety Centre, was at the Volvo Studio in Stockholm and talked about the three big challenges that we have to face today, concerning road safety: distraction, intoxication and speed.

Volvo has introduced the “speed cap” into all its cars from 2021: they are the first car manufacturer to do so. Within the EU all new cars launched from 2022 will have to be equipped with speed limiting equipment (of a lighter version than what Volvo is fitting its cars with).

In the Volvo Studio in Warsaw, Paweł Kurpiewski was the speaker who is an expert on child safety in cars, biomechanics and traffic safety “influencer”.

He provides a service in Poland, where people can drive in and get educated on child safety in cars. He has 450 different car seats and he shows parents to pick the right one for their car and their children as well as how to use the seats properly.

After the presentation of Mr. Kurpiewski, Mr. Russel Henk showed his ideas. He is the program director for “Teens in the Driver Seat” in Texas, USA. His organization encourage teenagers to teach each other how to drive safely in San Antonio, Texas.

Although quite a few people had their doubts about the feasibility of this approach, Mr. Henk disabused the people and showed

that the peer to peer approach actually works.

The third speaker was Ms. Mie Shimizu from Japan who has a surprising recipe for road safety: play!
Ms. Shimizu is a child educator who is responsible for the planning and development at the “play to learn” experience centre KidZania in Tokyo. She presented the project she has created: a game for children and adults which teaches road safety.

Federica Deledda, from the Volvo Studio in Milan, introduced the Icaro Project of the Italian Traffic Police. In 20 years, over 200,000 students of all levels were reached in schools and many hundreds of thousands have come into contact with police during the events in theaters, in squares and in the activities proposed on board of the “blue bus”, which is the moving classroom of the traffic police. Due to its effectiveness, the project has been adopted by several other countries within the European Community, thus becoming a European project called “Icarus”.

Michele Crisci, President of Volvo Car Italia, stated: “Safety has always been the guiding principle of Volvo's actions. We believe that an automobile manufacturer has a duty to address all factors that affect traffic safety. In the past as well as today, our proposals are causing discussion; we are convinced that the important thing is to keep everyone's attention on the issue of, even provoking reactions. Our only goal has always been the same: to ensure that all those who use the road are safe, inside and outside the car. "

ROADPOL was also connected to the live streaming of the international Volvo Studio which was share by the Italian Traffic Police.