2003 Mercury Mountaineer Owner Guide 1st Printing (Spanish) - Page 395

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. • Front safety belts with pretensioners, energy management retractors, and safety belt usage sensors. • Driver's seat position sensor. • Front crash severity sensor. • Restraints Control Module (RCM). • Restraint system warning light and back-up tone. • The electrical wiring for the air bags, crash sensor(s), safety belt pretensioners, front safety belt usage sensors, driver seat position sensor, and indicator lights. How does the personal safety system work? The Personal Safety System can adapt the deployment strategy of your vehicle's safety devices according to crash severity and occupant conditions. A collection of crash and occupant sensors provides information to the Restraints Control Module (RCM). During a crash, the RCM activates the safety belt pretensioners and/or either one or both stages of the dual-stage air bag supplemental restraints based on crash severity and occupant conditions. The fact that the pretensioners or air bags did not activate for both front seat occupants in a collision does not mean that something is wrong with the system. Rather, it means the Personal Safety System determined the accident conditions (crash severity, belt usage, etc.) were not appropriate to activate these safety devices. Front air bags are designed to activate only in frontal and near-frontal collisions, not rollovers, side-impacts, or rear-impacts unless the collision causes sufficient longitudinal deceleration. 108