The Midsize Naturalistic Driving FOT in China (China FOT) is a joint effort by Volvo Cars, the Chinese Ministry of Transport's Research Institute of Highway (RIOH), Tongji University, Chalmers University of Technology and the Swedish companies ÅF Technologies and Autoliv.

Four of the participants – Volvo Cars, RIOH, Tongji University and Chalmers University of Technology – are also partners of the recently opened China-Sweden Research Centre for Traffic Safety in Beijing, China.

Starting next month, the project will see 10 Volvo S60Ls equipped with a number of cameras that monitor the driver and the surrounding traffic. Information is also collected from the car-integrated sensors in the safety and driver support systems.

The cars will be driven by real customers in Beijing and Shanghai over a 10-month test period, generating around 100,000km of real-life experience, which will be analysed during 2015.

Volvo Cars said that the insight into how drivers handle these exceptionally busy traffic environments is an important part of its aim to develop safety systems that help drivers all over the world to avoid accidents.

‘The development of all our world-leading safety technologies is based on knowledge from real-life traffic. The field operational test in China will provide us with a valuable insight into the behaviour of drivers in an intense environment with a very high rate of accidents and casualties. The study will also document how our present safety and driver support systems work in a Chinese context,’ said John-Fredrik Grönvall, manager traffic accident research at Volvo Cars Safety Centre.

So far, the most extensive field operational tests have been carried out in the United States and Europe. Volvo Cars was also one of the partners in the recently completed Euro FOT study.

'The baseline behaviour of a driver is pretty much the same wherever you go in the world. However, the culture and the specific traffic environment are local factors that influence vital behaviours, such as how you take and avoid risks in intense city traffic. This is one of our main focus areas in the China FOT study,’ said Grönvall.