The carmaker Volvo has announced its goal to eliminate all instances in which motorists and pedestrians are killed by a Volvo passenger vehicle by the year 2020, and to help the car manufacturer achieve this goal, Volvo engineers have designed a first of its kind safety feature: pedestrian airbags. This new pedestrian cushioning airbag is a standard feature on all new models of the Volvo V40 as part of the company’s attempt to honor the commitment it made to the United Kingdom’s Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety last year to make UK roadways safer for motorists and pedestrians within the next decade, which has been proclaimed as the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety. Currently pedestrian related accidents account for more than one out of 10 fatal accidents in Europe and about one in four in China. Annually, approximately 1.3 million people die in roadway traffic accidents, including more than 24,000 in the United Kingdom. The pedestrian airbag is part of a safety system that also includes pedestrian detection sensors. Volvo safety experts, in designing the pedestrian air bag, concentrated on cushioning the primary points of collision when a vehicle strikes a pedestrian, including the rigid under the hood support structure, the vehicle’s A-pillars, and the lower edge of the windshield. These areas of vehicles are the most likely to cause head injuries to pedestrians hit by vehicles, according to the automaker’s collision research.