Volvo cuts scene of driver falling asleep at the wheel after Ad Standards ruling

Volvo has been forced to modify one of its ads to remove scenes of a mother starting to fall asleep at the wheel of her vehicle and a scene depicting a baby being left unsupervised on a changing table.

Complaints lodged to Ad Standards were purely concerned with the scene of the clearly fatigued woman losing focus while driving her car which veered into the oncoming lane until the lane keeping aid feature came into effect. While deliberating over the complaints the community panel also took note of the scene in which the parents turned their backs to a baby on a changing table which was determined to be a risk for injury for infants as per the Child Accident Prevention Foundation of Australia’s advice.

Complainants wrote that depicting a woman falling asleep at the wheel sent a dangerous message about driving while fatigued that a technical feature of a car is a sufficient substitute for an alert driver.

Volvo responded to the complaint by pointing out that ‘there are no laws regulating driver fatigue’ and that the brand is committed to ‘developing technologies to combat these issues as well as contributing to discussions about encouraging better driver behaviour’ as part of its safety vision that ‘no one should be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo car’.