Safety Technologies
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How Does a Car Send an Emergency Call Automatically When It Crashes?
When a crash happens and the control unit reads a sudden deceleration from the acceleration sensors inside the car and interprets it as a serious collision, it automatically establishes a free 112 emergency call on its own and transmits a small data …
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The Little Rocket Inside the Airbag: How Does the Gas Generator Work?
There is actually a tiny rocket motor inside an airbag: the gas generator, or inflator. At the moment of impact, the solid propellant burns within milliseconds, producing a large volume of nitrogen gas that fills the bag; the secret of this inflation…
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Why Does the Steering Column Deliberately Collapse in a Crash?
The steering column collapses in a controlled manner when the designed force threshold is exceeded during a collision, absorbing the impact energy; this way, the steering wheel is not pushed toward the driver, and the risk of chest injury is signific…
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How Do Side Curtain Airbags Protect Your Head Along the Window?
The side curtain airbag is a long fabric curtain that runs along the roof rail and prevents the head from being flung outward past the window edge in a side impact. Since glass can shatter, this curtain is often the only thing between your head and t…
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How Does TPMS Measure Tire Pressure?
TPMS, or tire pressure monitoring system, is an electronic safety device that alerts the driver by illuminating a yellow warning light on the dashboard when a tire's air pressure drops significantly. It detects this either through actual pressure sen…
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How Do Night Vision Systems Read the Road by Seeing Heat?
Night vision systems detect pedestrians and animals beyond the reach of your headlight beam in two different ways: thermal (LWIR) cameras read the heat that objects emit themselves, while active infrared (NIR) systems convert the reflection from an i…
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How Does the Seatbelt Pretensioner Take Up Slack in the First Milliseconds?
The front pretensioner is a small but critical safety component that fires with pyrotechnic fuel to remove the slack in the belt and secure the occupant to the seat within the first milliseconds of a collision. It works together with the force limite…
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How Does a Car Detect a Rollover? Rollover Protection System
How does a car know it's rolling over? In short, like this: Sensors measuring lateral acceleration, vertical acceleration, and angular velocity calculate the vehicle's likelihood of rolling over within milliseconds; once this decision reaches the con…
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How Headrests Prevent Whiplash Injuries?
A head restraint is a safety component that limits the head from snapping backward in rear-end collisions, thereby preventing whiplash injuries. When adjusted to the correct height and distance, it can reduce neck injuries by 24 to 44 percent; active…
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What Does a Car Record During a Crash? The Event Data Recorder
At the moment of a crash, your car writes data such as speed, braking, throttle, steering, and seatbelt status to the event data recorder, or EDR, for a few seconds before the collision. This device does not record sound like an aircraft's black box;…
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Pop-up Hood and Pedestrian Airbag: Preparing the Body Before the Collision
Pop-up hoods and pedestrian airbags are exterior body safety technologies that activate just before a vehicle hits a pedestrian, raising the hood by approximately 100 mm and covering the hard windshield area with an airbag. The goal is not to protect…
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How Do ISOFIX Anchors Connect a Child Seat to the Body?
An ISOFIX anchor consists of two steel anchorage points that attach the child seat directly to the vehicle's body instead of the seat belt. The seat locks onto these two points at the junction between the seat cushion and backrest of the rear seat; i…
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