Several of my colleagues were convinced I was making it up when I told them that as a child I used to attend The Tufty Club. Tufty was a safety-conscious red squirrel who taught the children of the Seventies how to look both ways before crossing the road and about the difference between a pelican and a zebra crossing - at the height of his popularity, over 2 million children were members of the Club.
But a recent announcement from Volvo may mean that Tufty can at last rest in peace. The car manufacturer has announced a radical goal of ensuring that nobody (yes, you read that right - nobody) is seriously injured or killed in accidents involving any of its new cars within 11 years.
It's going to achieve this through improvements and innovations in in-car technology (e.g. systems that detect pedestrians and activate the brakes, "alert controls" that let you know when you're tired by detecting irregular driving patterns and other marvellous developments), as well as through funding driver education programmes and partnering with other stakeholders, looking at how the road infrastructure can be adapted to make it safer for everyone.
What a marvellous ambition for a company. That's true product responsibility - accepting that you are accountable not just for the impacts from your manufacturing process, but also the impacts of the people who buy and use your product.
Ambitious stuff. And maybe it could only happen in Sweden. But if they pull it off, then perhaps Tufty really can fade into quiet, and well-deserved, obscurity.
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