The article says:

Regarding safety of a collision...

ESA engineers said the spacecraft was equipped with three automatic safety systems, plus override by the ISS crew if need be, to prevent the nightmare of a collision with the station. The docking node itself is the same as the tried-and-tested Progress one, already used on a hundred Soviet and Russian missions.

Not sure what they mean by human safety requirements below.... after all ( Bowser's point) the 'pod' was meant to self-destruct upon re-entry.

"The ATV will have to fulfil the demanding requirements of human spacecraft safety and at the same time have enough automatic capabilities to never involve the astronauts in manual rendezvous intervention to dock the ATV with the ISS," European astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy said.

Key words here are 'temporary refuge':

Although the ATV is unmanned, its cargo hold is pressurised, and theoretically it could be used as a temporary refuge for crew in an emergency.



That is a scenario being actively studied because NASA is axing a "lifeboat" ship, the Crew Rescue Vehicle, because of budget cuts, ESA officials said.

You think NASA (et al) will re-think the "lifeboat" ship idea as the station gets close to completion? ISS won't be as large as originally planned, still, as it grows, the odds against something going wrong will too.

Not sure if anyone inside that pod will want to discuss anything except about the smell. That ATV is still in the planning stages and the French are great with perfume.

Marcia