Safety
serious injury and reduce the risk of being
thr o
wn out of the v
ehicle in case of an acci-
dent.
Vehicle occupants wearing their seat belts
correctly benefit greatly from the ability of
the belts to absorb kinetic energy. In addition,
the front part of your vehicle and other pas-
sive safety features (such as the airbag sys-
tem) are designed to absorb the kinetic ener-
gy released in a collision. Taken together, all
these features reduce the releasing kinetic
energy and consequently, the risk of injury.
This is why it is so important to fasten seat
belts before every trip, even when "just driving
around the corner".
Ensure that your passengers wear their seat
belts as well. Accident statistics have shown
that wearing seat belts is an effective means
of substantially reducing the risk of injury and
improving the chances of survival when in-
volved in a serious accident. Furthermore,
properly worn seat belts improve the protec-
tion provided by airbags in the event of an
accident. For this reason, wearing a seat belt
is required by law in most countries.
Although your vehicle is equipped with air-
bags, the seat belts must be fastened and
worn. The front airbags, for example, are only
triggered in some cases of head-on collision.
The front airbags will not be triggered during
minor frontal or side collisions, rear-end colli-
sions, rollovers or accidents in which the air- bag trigger threshold value in the control unit
is not exceeded.
Ther
efore, you should always wear your seat
belt and ensure that all vehicle occupants
have fastened their seat belts properly before
you drive off!
Head-on collisions and the laws of
physics Fig. 87
A driver not wearing a seat belt is
thr o
wn f
orward violently. Fig. 88
The unbelted rear passenger is thrown
forw ar
d violently, hitting the driver wearing a
seat belt The effects of the laws of physics in the case
of a head-on collision ar
e easy t
o e
xplain: the
moment a vehicle starts moving, a type of en-
ergy called “kinetic energy” starts acting on
both the vehicle and its passengers.
The amount of “kinetic energy” depends on
the speed of the vehicle and on the weight of
the vehicle and of its passengers. The higher
the speed and the greater the weight, the
more energy there is to be “absorbed” in an
accident.
The most significant factor, however, is the
speed of the vehicle. If the speed doubles
from 25 km/h (15 mph) to 50 km/h (30 mph),
for example, the corresponding kinetic ener-
gy is multiplied by four.
Because the vehicle occupants in our exam-
ple are not restrained by seat belts, in the
event of crashing against a wall, all of the
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