This was my reply to another related forum topic - safety in cars: "I wonder did a false sense of security start to set during the height of the Volvo 140/240 era when the Swedes promoted safety as the major feature of their product. I was doing a course at Uni on the North Shore of Sydney in 1977 and a few of us wanted to find out what the mind-set of Volvo drivers was. We were dissuaded because of lack of empirical evidence and how we would gather the data. Every second car in that area seemed to a Volvo. I have a feeling it was that "if we have a crash we're going to be safe" - no thought of avoiding an accident in the first place....." Volvo Australia promoted their survival stories as this 1976 publication points out. They also claimed that in Sweden there was a 61% less risk of a fatal accident in a Volvo.