2006 Saab 9-5 Owner's Manual - Page 33

Safety Passenger Sensing System Vehicles with a passenger sensing system have indicator LEDs on the fascia. The indicators will be lit during the system check when you turn your ignition key to ST or ON. When the system check is complete, either the ON or the OFF LED, will be lit. See AIRBAG warning light on page 61. If your vehicle does not have the indicators pictured, then your vehicle does not have the passenger sensing system. The passenger sensing system will turn off the right front passenger's frontal airbag and side airbag under certain conditions. The driver's airbags is not part of the passenger sensing system. The passenger sensing system works with sensors that are part of the right front passenger's seat and safety belt. The sensors are designed to detect the presence of a properly-seated occupant and determine if the passenger's frontal airbag should be enabled (may inflate) or not. Accident statistics show that children are safer if they are restrained in the rear rather than the front seat. Saab recommends that child restraints be secured in a rear seat, including an infant riding in a rear-facing infant seat, a child riding in a forward-facing child seat and an older child riding in a booster seat. Your vehicle has a rear seat that will accommodate a rear-facing child restraint. A label on your sun visor says, "Never put a rear-facing child seat in the front." This is because the risk to the rear-facing child is so great, if the airbag deploys. 33 WARNING A child in a rear-facing child restraint can be seriously injured or killed if the right front passenger's airbag inflates. This is because the back of the rear-facing child restraint would be very close to the inflating airbag. Even though the passenger sensing system is designed to turn off the passenger's frontal airbag if the system detects a rear-facing child restraint, no system is fail-safe, and no one can guarantee that an airbag will not deploy under some unusual circumstance, even though it is turned off. Saab recommends that rear-facing child restraints be secured in the rear seat, even if the airbag is off. Passenger Airbag Status Indicator. USA indicator shown, Canada similar IB3952