It may sound ambitious, but Mercedes-Benz is committing to a goal of crash-free driving in its vehicles by 2050.
Mercedes already has a well-establish reputation for building some of the safest cars in the business.
And the automaker doesn’t want to stop there.
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Mercedes believes that it can improve on its own standards by reaching the ultimate goal of eliminating crashes altogether.
It made the claim during a recent announcement marking the 20th anniversary of the introduction of Mercedes‘ first active safety systems.
You may recall that these first systems included the likes of preventative tensioning of seat belts ahead of an imminent crash, as well as the automatic closing of windows in critical driving situations.
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Mercedes’ safety record hasn’t always been squeaky clean, though.
Cast your mind back 25 years and you might recall Swedish magazine Teknikens Värld rolling the original A-Class during the so-called ‘Moose Test’.
This prompted Mercedes to fit Electronic Stability Control (ESC) as standard on the A-Class, which was previously limited to the range-topping S-Class, before being rolled out as a standard feature on all its models.
2050 might seem far away, but Mercedes has set itself some interim milestones.
These include reducing the number of traffic-relatives fatalities and serious injuries that occur in Mercedes vehicles by half compared to 2020 levels.
Crash-free driving by 2050
Mercedes is looking to partial and full self-driving systems in order to achieve crash-free driving by 2050.
The automaker already offers partial self-driving systems for single-lane highway driving in some markets.
These partial self-driving systems allow the drivers to take their hands off the wheel and eyes off the road for moments at a time.
If the car determines that it cannot operate properly with human input, the driver must then take back control.
