2006 Mercury Mariner Owner Guide 2nd Printing - Page 91

Seating and Safety Restraints information early in the crash event on the severity of the impact. This allows your Personal Safety System௢ to distinguish between different levels of crash severity and modify the deployment strategy of the dual-stage airbags and safety belt pretensioners. Driver's seat position sensor The driver's seat position sensor allows your Personal Safety System௢ to tailor the deployment level of the driver dual-stage airbag based on seat position. The system is designed to help protect smaller drivers sitting close to the driver airbag by providing a lower airbag output level. Front passenger sensing system For airbags to do their job they must inflate with great force, and this force can pose a potentially deadly risk to occupants that are very close to the airbag when it begins to inflate. For some occupants, like infants in rear-facing child seats, this occurs because they are initially sitting very close to the airbag. For other occupants, this occurs when the occupant is not properly restrained by seat belts or child safety seats and they move forward during pre-crash braking. The most effective way to reduce the risk of unnecessary injuries is to make sure all occupants are properly restrained. Accident statistics suggest that children are much safer when properly restrained in the rear seating positions than in the front. 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. Always transport children 12 years old and under in the back seat and always properly use appropriate child restraints. The front passenger sensing system can automatically turn off the passenger front airbag. The system is designed to help protect small (child size) occupants from airbag deployments when they are improperly seated or restrained in the front passenger seat contrary to proper child-seating or restraint usage recommendations. Even with this technology, parents are STRONGLY encouraged to always properly restrain children in the rear seat. The sensor also turns off the passenger front airbag and passenger seat-mounted side airbag (if equipped) when the passenger seat is empty. When the front passenger seat is occupied and the sensing system has turned off the passenger's frontal airbag, the "pass airbag off" indicator 91 2006 Mariner (mrn) Owners Guide (post-2002-fmt) USA (fus)