Safety First: Protecting Your Loved Ones From Car Collisions

Safety should also be taken into consideration when purchasing a car. Accidents happen in Brandon FL but there are ways to lessen the injury you get. Reader’s Digest lists nine car safety features to look out for.

1. Seat Belts. These are designed to keep you inside the vehicle and reduce the risk that you will collide with the steering wheel, dashboard, or windshield. New seat designs have additional features such as adjustable upper belts, seat belt pretensioner, energy management features, and rear center seat lap/shoulder belts. Adjustable upper belts let you change the position of the shoulder strap to accommodate a person’s size. Pretensioners, on the other hand, retract the seatbelt to remove excess slack, almost instantly, in a crash. However, you still to adjust your seat belt so that it fits as snugly as possible, since pretensioners are not powerful enough to pull you back into your seat in the event of an impact.

2. Air Bags. Depending on the speed at impact and the stiffness of the object struck, front air bags inflate to prevent occupants from hitting the dashboard, steering wheel, and windshield. Side air bags reduce the risk that occupants will hit the door or objects that crash through it.

However, having air bags doesn’t mean it’s okay for you to go unbelted. Also, children should be put in the rear seat as they can be seriously be killed or injured by an air bag.

3. Head Injury Protection. It consists of foam or other energy-absorbing material under the trim of the vehicle interior and is likely to be invisible to vehicle occupants. Some vehicles have head air bags. While all head air bags are designed to deploy in side impacts, some are also designed to deploy during rollovers. Both types of air bags are designed to help protect occupants from injuries caused when their head strikes the upper interior of a vehicle.

4. Head Restraints. These are extensions of the vehicle’s seats that limit head movement during a rear-impact crash, thus, reducing the probability of neck injury. Head restraints meeting specific size and strength requirements are required in front seats, but not in rear seats. In general, dynamic head restraints provide the best protection.

5. Antilock Brake System. An antilock brake system (ABS) prevents a vehicle’s wheels from locking during “panic” braking, which allows the driver to maintain greater steering control — a key factor in avoiding a collision. However, an ABS does not guarantee your ability to avoid a crash. Furthermore, you still may lose control when driving at excessive speeds or when using extreme steering maneuvers. Learning to use the ABS correctly will provide you with the greatest benefit from the system.

6. Traction Control. Traction control systems improve vehicle stability by controlling the amount the drive wheels can slip when you apply excess power. The system automatically adjusts the engine power output and, in some systems, applies braking force to selected wheels during acceleration. Traction control is mainly found in vehicles with four-wheel antilock brake systems.

7. All-Wheel Drive. It distributes power to both front and rear wheels to maximize traction. Unless combined with traction control, all-wheel drive systems do not prevent the drive wheels from slipping when you apply excess power during acceleration.

8. Electronic Stability Control. It is designed to assist drivers in maintaining control of their vehicles during extreme steering maneuvers. Electronic stability control senses when a vehicle is starting to spin out (oversteer) or plow out (understeer), and it automatically applies the brake to a single wheel. It is intended to reduce the occurrence of crashes in which vehicles veer off the road and strike curbs, soft shoulders, guard rails and other objects that initiate rollovers. However, it can’t keep a vehicle on the road if its speed is simply too great for the curve and the available traction.

9. Weight. Crash data show that heavy vehicles offer more protection than light vehicles with the same safety equipment, particularly in two-vehicle crashes.

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