Correct us if we’re wrong, but aren’t Volvos->ke188 supposed to be considered one of the safest cars on the road?

It sure doesn’t seem like it these days after the Swedish car brand had another embarrassing episode while having another safety demonstration in front of Australian journalists in Europe. Before you start asking what on earth Aussie journalists are doing in Europe, that’s not really the point here.

The point is that a car brand noted for its outstanding safety features has once again been cast into the spotlight for another incident that pretty much undermines what we’ve known from Volvo over the years. Even worse, this isn’t the first time it happened. Back in May, the Volvo was testing out the new S60 and its intelligent emergency brakes when, during another demonstration in front of the media, inexplicably lost its brakes and ended up crashing into the back of a stationary truck.

Continued - with more videos - after the jump

This time, Volvo was demonstrating its new pedestrian avoidance technology that is meant to detect the presence of pedestrians on the road and controls the stability and brake control systems to avoid hitting pedestrians. Except that in a test done 12 times, Volvo’s system failed to work, causing the car to plow straight into the dummy.

In true PR-spinning action, Volvo blamed the failed tests on the dummy not being set up properly, causing the system to not recognize it’s poor presence as it was headed straight for it.

We’ve been around long enough to know when someone’s trying to spin a negative situation into a positive one and this, dear friends, is on page one of the Spinner’s Handbook.

But hey, you gotta give some credit to that dummy too. In one of the videos, it managed to jump right back up after getting creamed by the Volvo. Who says that dummies are as fragile as ceramic tiles?