2012 VOLKSWAGEN TOUAREG child restraint

d Make sure that children are properly secured by a restraint system appropriate for their size and
weight ⇒  Child safety and child restraints.
d Properly adjust front seats, all head restraints and mirrors to the correct height ⇒  Adjusting the seating position.
d Wear shoes that give your feet a good grip and that give you a feel for the pedals.
d Make sure that the floormat on the driver side is properly fastened and cannot interfere with the pedals.
d Assume a proper seating position before the vehicle starts to move and keep this position while
driving. Make sure that all passengers do the same ⇒  Adjusting the seating position.
d Properly fasten your safety belt before driving the vehicle and wear your safety belt properly at all
times while driving. Make sure that all passengers do the same ⇒  Safety belts.
d Only transport as many passengers as there are seats and safety belts available.
d Never drive if your driving ability has been impaired, for example, by medication, alcohol, or illegal drugs.
d Never let passengers or phone calls distract you while driving and never take your attention off the road while using vehicle software or adjusting vehicle equipment or accessories.
d Always adapt your speed and driving style to visibility, weather, road, and traffic conditions.
d Always obey traffic laws and speed limits.
d On long trips make frequent rest stops – at least once every 2 hours.
d Secure animals in the vehicle with a system that corresponds to their weight and size.
WARNING
Always observe traffic rules and posted speed limits and use common sense. Your good judgment can mean the difference between arriving safely at your destination and being seri-ously injured in a crash or other kind of accident.
Regular service and maintenance of your vehicle is important both for operational and driving safety and to help prolong your vehicle's service life. Always follow the scheduled maintenance inter-
vals in the ⇒ Booklet Warranty and Maintenance, especially for changing the brake fluid. Hard use, frequent stop-and-go driving, driving in very dusty areas, trailer towing, and other factors may make it necessary to have the vehicle serviced more frequently. Ask an authorized Volkswagen dealer or an authorized Volkswagen Service Facility for more information.
Driving in other countries

WARNING
Certain medical conditions, such as paralysis and diabetes, and certain medications can increase the risk of serious burns when the seat heating feature is switched on.
x Vehicle occupants who have a low level of perceived pain or a lowered awareness of pain can receive serious burns to the back, buttocks, and legs that take a long time to heal or may never heal completely.
x Never use the seat heating feature if you or your passengers are at risk of being burned because of a medical condition. Take regular breaks and get out of the vehicle, particularly on long trips. Consult your doctor for advice regarding your specific condition.
x Never let exposed skin remain in contact with the seat upholstery when the seat heating is being used.
WARNING
x A wet seat can cause the seat heating to malfunction and increase the risk of serious burns.
x Always make sure the seats are dry before using the seat heating.
x Never sit on the seat with wet clothes.
x Never put damp or wet things including clothes on the seat.
x Never spill liquids on the seats.
NOTICE
x To help prevent damage to electrical and other parts in the seat, do not kneel on the front seats or apply concentrated pressure to a small area of the seat or backrest.
x Liquids, sharp objects and things that do not let the heat in the seat escape into the air, including, for example, a child restraint, a blanket or seat covers on the seat can damage seat heating.
x If you smell an odor, immediately shut off seat heating and have it checked by an authorized Volkswagen dealer or authorized Volkswagen Service Facility.
x Never install leather upholstery on a vehicle with seat heating that originally had cloth upholstery. The seat heating elements for seats with cloth seats will overheat if the cloth up-holstery is replaced with leather upholstery.
Switch off seat heating when it is not needed to help reduce unnecessary fuel consumption.
Memory seats

Fig. 55 Memory buttons in the upper part of the driver and front passenger doors.

WARNING
Not wearing a safety belt or wearing an improperly positioned safety belt increases the risk of severe personal injury or death. Safety belts offer optimum protection only when they are used properly.
x Properly worn safety belts are the single most effective means of reducing the risk of serious injury and death in a collision or other accident. For this reason, always wear your safety belt properly and make sure all passengers wear their safety belts properly as well whenever the vehicle is moving.
x The driver must always make sure that every person in the vehicle is properly seated on a seat of his or her own, properly fastens the safety belts belonging to that seat before the vehicle starts to move, and keeps the belts properly fastened while riding in the vehicle. This applies even when just driving around town. Therefore, always wear your safety belts and make sure that everybody in your vehicle is properly restrained.
x Always secure children in the vehicle with a restraint system appropriate for their age, weight and height
x Always fasten safety belts correctly before driving off and make sure that all passengers are properly restrained.
x Never attach the safety belt to the buckle of another seat. Attaching the safety belt to the wrong buckle will reduce safety belt effectiveness and can cause serious personal injury.
x Never let any objects or liquids get into the safety belt latch and prevent it from working properly.
x Never remove a safety belt while the vehicle is moving. Doing so will increase your risk of being injured or killed.
x Never strap more than one person, including small children, into any single safety belt.
x Never let children or babies ride sitting on your lap, and never place a safety belt over a child sitting on your lap.
x Never wear belts over rigid or breakable objects in or on your clothing, such as eye glass-es, pens, keys, etc., as these may cause injury.
x Several layers of heavy clothing (such as a coat worn over top of a sports jacket) may interfere with proper positioning of the belt and reduce the overall effectiveness of the sys-tem.
x Never use comfort clips or devices that create slack in the shoulder belt. However, special clips may be required for the correct use of some child restraint systems.
x Safety belts offer optimum protection only when the seat backrest is upright and belts are correctly positioned on the body.

If you cannot untwist the safety belt, wear it anyway. Make sure that the safety belt is twisted in a spot where it does not come in direct contact with your body. Have the safety belt untwisted immediately by an authorized Volkswagen dealer or authorized Volkswagen Service Facility.
Lockable safety belt
The retractors for the rear seat safety belts and the front passenger safety belt have a switchable locking feature for child restraints in addition to the emergency locking feature. Whenever a child restraint is installed with a safety belt, the safety belt must be locked so that the safety belt webbing cannot unreel. The switchable locking feature lets you lock the belt so that a child restraint can be properly installed and, for example, so that it can't tip to the side when the vehicle goes around a
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To see whether a safety belt is lockable, pull the safety belt all the way out of the safety belt retractor. You should then hear a “clicking” sound as the belt winds back into the retractor reel. Test the switch-able locking feature by pulling on the belt. When the switchable locking feature is active, you should no longer be able to pull the belt out of the retractor.
The locking feature must be deactivated when a vehicle occupant uses the safety belt.
WARNING
Improper use and care of safety belts increases the risk of severe personal injury or death.
x Regularly check safety belts and related parts for damage.
x Damaged safety belts must be replaced; they cannot be repaired.
x Always keep safety belts clean.
x Never catch, damage or chafe safety belt webbing on sharp edges.
x Always keep objects and liquids away from the belt buckle and buckle opening.
Fastening and unfastening safety belts

Fig. 63 Inserting the buckle tongue into the belt buckle.

person who is not using the safety belt. Leaving the extender attached to the safety belt buckle when the front seat is occupied and the safety belt is not being used will signal the airbag control unit during a collision that the front passenger seat is occupied and that the safety belt is being used. The elec-tronic control unit for the airbag system will then receive incorrect information that will cause the safety belt pretensioner to deploy unnecessarily and the front passenger airbag to deploy later in collisions that would normally trigger the front airbag earlier in the collision to help protect an unrestrained front seat occupant. The airbag will not be able to provide enough protection for an occupant not wearing a safety belt.
x Only use the safety belt extender approved by Volkswagen for your vehicle.
WARNING
Improper use or positioning of a safety belt extender increases the risk of serious personal injury and death.
x A driver or passenger who is not properly restrained can be seriously injured by striking the interior of the passenger compartment or by the safety belt itself, which can be displaced from stronger parts of the body into sensitive areas like the abdomen.
x Safety belt extenders offer optimum protection only when they are properly used.
x Only use the extender when the belt is not long enough to be worn low and snug and the person is in the correct seating position. Remove and stow extender safely when not needed.
x Always make sure the safety belt tongue of the safety belt extender is securely inserted into the buckle for the seating position that belongs to the seat where the safety belt extender is being used. Attaching the safety belt to the wrong buckle will reduce safety belt effective-ness and can cause serious personal injury.
x Never use the safety belt extender if you can properly attach the safety belt without it. Using a safety belt extender when not needed can increase the risk of injury, especially in a collision.
x Never use a safety belt extender if the distance (B) between the front edge of the safety belt extender buckle (A) and the centerline of the person using the safety belt extender
⇒ fig. 69 (C) is less than 6 inches (15 cm).
x Never leave a safety belt extender attached to the vehicle safety belt buckle when the extender is not needed and being used with the safety belt. Otherwise, the airbag control module will receive an incorrect signal from the safety belt buckle and this will prevent the airbag from working properly for a person who is not using the safety belt.
x Never use more than 1 extender with a safety belt. Using more than 1 extender can change the way the safety belt passes over the body and can cause serious injury.
x Never use the safety belt extender to secure a child restraint.
x Never use a safety belt extender on your Volkswagen that you got from another automo-bile manufacturer or from an automotive parts store.
x Never use the safety belt extender you got for your vehicle for any other vehicle, regard-less of make, model, or model year.
NOTICE
x Leaving the extender attached to the safety belt buckle when the front seat is occupied and the safety belt is not being used will signal to the airbag control unit that the front passenger seat is occu-pied and that the safety belt is being used. The electronic control unit for the airbag system will then receive incorrect information that will
– cause the safety belt pretensioner to deploy unnecessarily in collisions.
– cause the front passenger airbag to deploy later in collisions in which the front airbag would otherwise be triggered earlier to help protect an unrestrained front seat passenger.

x After putting the seat backrest back up, the seat must be adjusted to the person using it ⇒  Adjust-ing the seating position.
WARNING
Improper folding and improper latching of the rear seat backrest can cause serious personal injury.
x Always make sure there are no people or animals in the area around the rear seat backrest when folding it forward.
x Never fold the rear backrest up or down while the vehicle is moving.
x When folding the rear seat backrest back up, make sure that the safety belt does not get caught or damaged.
x Keep hands, fingers, feet and other body parts out of the way when folding the rear seat backrest up and down.
x Each rear seat backrest must be securely latched in the upright position so that the safety belts on the rear seats can provide protection. This is particularly the case for the middle seat on the rear bench.
x If a seat is used with an unsecured backrest, the passenger will move forward together with the rear seat backrest during sudden braking, driving maneuvers or a collision.
x No one, including children, may ride on the rear seats if the rear seat backrest is folded down or not correctly latched.
NOTICE
Before folding the rear seat backrest forward, adjust the front seats so that the rear seat's head restraint or backrest cushion will not butt up against the front seats.
x The weight on the rear seat backrests when folded down must never exceed 110 lbs. (50 kg).
NOTICE
Items in the luggage compartment could be damaged or cause damage when the rear seat is adjusted in the fore and aft direction.
If the vehicle battery charge is weak, power release of the rear seat backrests may not be possi-ble.

unit. Some suspension changes can, for example, increase the force levels measured by the airbag sensors and send to the electronic control unit and make the airbag system deploy in crashes in which it would not deploy if the changes had not been made. Other kinds of changes may reduce the force levels measured by the sensors and prevent the airbag from deploying when it should.
Never install leather upholstery on a vehicle that originally had cloth upholstery. Never install cloth upholstery on a vehicle that originally had leather upholstery. The weight-sensing mat for the Ad-vanced Airbag system will not work properly if different upholstery is installed on the passenger seat than the upholstery originally installed on the vehicle when it was originally manufactured.
WARNING
Changing the vehicle's suspension including use of unapproved tire-rim combinations can change airbag performance and increase the risk of serious personal injury in a crash.
x Never install suspension components that do not have the same performance characteris-tics as the components originally installed on your vehicle.
x Never use tire-rim combinations that have not been approved by Volkswagen.
WARNING
Leaving the optional safety belt extender attached to the safety belt buckle on the front pas-senger seat when the safety belt is not being used will prevent the Advanced Airbag System from working properly and can increase the risk of serious personal injury in a collision.
x Leaving the extender attached to the safety belt buckle when the front seat is occupied and the safety belt is not being used will signal to the airbag control unit that the front pas-senger seat is occupied and that the safety belt is being used. The electronic control unit for the airbag system will then receive incorrect information that will
– cause the safety belt pretensioner to deploy unnecessarily in collisions and
– cause the front passenger airbag to deploy later in collisions in which the front airbag would otherwise be triggered earlier to help protect an unrestrained front seat passenger.
x Always remove the safety belt extender when it is not needed and stow it safely.
x Never use the safety belt extender to secure a child restraint.
WARNING
Items stored between the safety belt buckle and the center console can cause safety belt buckle to send the wrong information to the airbag control unit and prevent the Advanced Airbag System from working properly.
x Always make sure that nothing can interfere with the safety belt buckles and that they are not obstructed.