"Cars will come a full stop at speeds less than about 15 miles an hour if their radar systems detect they are about to strike a car or a person. If the car is going faster, the car will try to come as close to a full stop as possible."

Volvo safety engineers believe they can reduce the impact force of a collision by 75% with these features. Also, the number of rear-end collisions involving the S60 should be cut down.

Statistics, the story says, show that in 50% of the cases of rear-end collisions, drivers never hit their brakes. (This article from ScienceDaily helps explains why, as well as says that there were 1.8 million rear-end collisions in the US in 2006, or 29% of all injury crashes here).

There are many brake assist systems out there (see a short list here), but from what this USA Today story implies, this is the first where the car will act completely independent of the driver.

The story cites Ford's safety chief as saying Ford found drivers didn't want their car to have full control over braking.

Volvo has set a highly aggressive goal of achieving zero deaths and injuries in its cars by 2020, and obviously believes that autonomous control is the only means to help in achieving that.

This difference in philosophy reminds me of the Airbus versus Boeing arguments involving who ultimately controls the airplane: the flight control system or the pilot.

What do you think? Would you buy a car that had these safety features?

And are US drivers different in their attitude about autonomous vehicle control versus European drivers or those elsewhere in the world?