2001 Lincoln LS Owner's Manual - Page 124

Seating and safety restraints Children and air bags For additional important safety information, read all information on safety restraints in this guide. Children must always be properly restrained. Accident statistics suggest that children are safer when properly restrained in the rear seating positions than in the front seating position. Failure to follow these instructions may increase the risk of injury in a collision. Air bags can kill or injure a child in a child seat. NEVER place a rear-facing child seat in front of an active air bag. If you must use a forward-facing child seat in the front seat, move the seat all the way back. How does the safety belt pretensioner and air bag supplemental restraint system work? The safety belt pretensioner and air bag SRS are designed to activate when the vehicle sustains longitudinal deceleration sufficient to cause the sensors to close an electrical circuit that initiates pretensioner activation and air bag inflation. The fact that the pretensioners and air bags did not activate in a collision does not mean that something is wrong with the system. Rather, it means the forces were not of the type sufficient to cause activation. Front air bags and pretensioners are designed to activate in frontal and near-frontal collisions, not rollover, side-impact, or rear-impacts unless the collision causes sufficient longitudinal deceleration. 124