Volvo introduces airbags for pedestrians

If you're a psychopath maybe.

I don't fully understand the thinking behind your question.

If a system like this is widely available, and it proves effective, then there will it will provide the benefit of reduced injury. Reduced injury means lower medical bills for the injured and lower settlement payouts.

Insurance premiums are tightly modeled. Lower risk and incident costs mean lower rates. That's one potential benefit to the purchaser.

You also have to consider regulation. Humans are poor judges of risk. There was a time not too long ago when consumers would choose "cheap" over "safe" if given a choice. I don't mean to say that consumers would walk in to a dealership and say, "Give me the cheapest car you have, safety be damned!" I mean to say that car manufacturers would say, "Oh yeah, of course it's safe," and consumers would take their claims at face value. That proved to be a poor choice.

Enter government regulation. At some point, it became clear that automakers and consumers weren't going to make cars sufficiently safe on their own. The first steps in safety were things like mandatory fitment of seat belts, then compulsory wearing. Airbags followed, then ABS.

Now we're seeing an increase in regulations related to pedestrian safety. There are already some pretty significant laws on the books in the EU related to pedestrian safety. Car and Driver, of course, takes the perspective of how this effects automobile design:

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/taking-the-hit-how-pede...

Volvo has a pretty long history of pioneering safety systems that are later made compulsory by legislation. I suspect we may be seeing the same thing here.

Still, less people are dying in road accidents now than before safety features were common.

But remember this is a fallacy: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/post/259350

All it did was cause a lot of unnecessary deaths.

If there was a long spike on the steering wheel, most likely it would be chopped off by end users; otherwise the vehicle wouldn't be driven at all.

ABS is associated with a decrease in motorcycle injuries even though riders ride faster with it, especially in the wet. But ABS on a bike has a bigger value, because a slight slip on a bike is a very serious problem; a sliding front will cause an accident almost immediately, while a sliding rear when cornering may cause a serious high-side.

I suppose the other type of malfunction would be accidentally discharge, but this is a) exceedingly rare, and b) no riskier than the airbags already in the car

Now I wonder which sensors they use, if they use a camera and some people detection algorithm, it can probably be fooled by a plastic toy. And of course a car which activates the brakes automatically can be quite dangerous depending on the situation, especially if the driver is not prepared for a malfunction. So I wonder who is actually responsible when the car decides to activate the brakes and the driver loses control.