2000 Mercury Sable Owner Guide 1st Printing - Page 78
2000 Mercury Sable Manual
Page 78 highlights
Seating and safety restraints SAFETY RESTRAINTS Personal Safety System The Personal Safety System provides an improved overall level of frontal crash protection to front seat occupants and is designed to help further reduce the risk of air bag-related injuries. The system is able to analyze different occupant conditions and crash severity before activating the appropriate safety devices to help better protect a range of occupants in a variety of frontal crash situations. Your vehicle's Personal Safety System consists of: • Driver and passenger dual-stage air bag supplemental restraints. Refer to the Air bag supplemental restraints section in this chapter. • Front safety belts with pretensioners, energy management retractors, and safety belt usage sensors. Refer to the Safety belts section in this chapter. • Driver's seat position sensor. • Front crash severity sensor. • Restraints Control Module (RCM) with impact and safing sensors. • An indicator light and back-up tone. • The electrical wiring for the air bags, crash sensor(s), safety belt pretensioners, front safety belt usage sensors and driver's seat position sensor. How does the personal safety system work? The Personal Safety System uses a collection of sensors to gather information about the driver's seat position, driver and front outboard passenger's safety belt usage and accident severity. Then, dual-stage inflating air bags are combined with safety belt pretensioners and energy management retractors to help provide enhanced occupant protection in frontal crashes. The driver's seat position sensor determines if the seat is fore or aft of a reference position. Similarly, the safety belt usage sensors determine if the driver and front outboard passenger safety belts are fastened. These sensors provide the ability to tailor the air bag deployment based upon how close the driver's seat is to the steering wheel and whether or not the safety belts are fastened. The dual-stage air bags offer the ability to tailor the air bag inflation with two energy levels. A lower, less forceful energy level is provided for more 78