Audi TT 2016 - Why Safety Belts

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The warning light . in the instrument cluster
lights up when the ignition is switched on as a re-
minder to fasten the safety belts . In addition,
you will hear a warning tone for a certain period
of time.
Fasten your safety belt and make sure that your
passengers also properly put on their safety
belts.
A WARNING
- Safety belts are the single most effective
means ava ilable to reduce the risk of serious
injury and death in automobi le accidents .
For your protect ion and that of your passen-
gers, always correctly wea r safety be lts
when the vehicle is moving .
- Failure to pay attention to the warn ing light
that comes on could lead to personal injury.
Why safety belts?
Frontal collisions and the law of physics
Frontal crashes create very strong forces for peo-
ple riding in vehicles.
Fig. 150 Unbelted occupants in a veh icle head ing for a wall
Fig. 151 The vehicle crashes into the wa ll
Safety belts
The physical principles are simple. Both the vehi-
cle and the passengers possess energy which var-
ies with vehicle speed and body weight . Engi-
neers call this energy "kinetic energy."
The higher the speed of the vehicle and the
greater the vehicle's weight, the more energy
that has to be "absorbed" in the cras h.
Vehicle speed is t he most sign ifican t factor.
If
the speed doubles from 15 to 30 mph (25 to 50
km/h), the energy increases 4 times!
Because the passengers of t his vehicle ar e not us-
ing safe ty belts
r=> fig . 150, they will keep moving
at t he same speed the vehicle was moving just
before the crash, until something stops them -
here, the wall
r=>fig. 151 .
The same principles apply to people sitting in a
vehicle that is involved in a fronta l collision. Even
at city speeds of 20 to 30 mph (30 to 50 km/h),
the forces acting on the body can reach one ton
(2,000 lbs, or 1,000 kg) or more. At higher
speeds, these forces are even greater.
People who do not use safety belts are a lso not
attached to the ir vehicle. In a frontal coll ision
they will also keep moving forward at the speed
their vehicle was travelling just before the crash .
Of course, the laws of physics don't just apply to
frontal collisions , they determine wha t happens
in all kinds of accidents and collisions .
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