It took 13 years to develop but there has never been a more efficient provision for Driver safety than the AIRBAG SYSTEM. Mercedes-Benz now celebrates the 30th anniversary of this revolutionary life-saving innovation.
Since its introduction nearly 3 decades ago, the system has saved over 28,000 lives in the US alone. Mercedes-Benz made the airbag available in series-production cars long before other manufacturers. This foresight is responsible for the rapid and continuous decline in the number of road accident victims worldwide. In fact, occupants of vehicles with airbags have a statistical probability of fatal injury reduced by about 61%.
But the systems developers at Mercedes-Benz were already aware of these advantages. This prior knowledge has allowed them to create some of the most sophisticated safety systems in existence today.
- Mercedes-Benz was also the world pioneer in the field of handling safety systems such as ESP®. The aim of these is to prevent accidents when the driver has lost control of the vehicle.
- With PRE-SAFE®, which has been available exclusively in Mercedes models since 2002, the company's approach is to use anticipatory safety measures to avoid accidents completely, mitigate their severity and reduce the loads acting on vehicle occupants.
- Improvement and extension of protective systems: after driver and front passenger airbags, Mercedes-Benz developed sidebags and headbags for protection during lateral collisions – with great success: according to the findings of in-house accident researchers, the probability of serious or fatal injury in the event of a lateral collision in a vehicle equipped with headbags is reduced by more than half. The proportion of seriously and fatally injured occupants in lateral collisions fell significantly in the cases examined.
- Protective systems are becoming more and more intelligent: belt tensioners improve the protective effect of seat belts. Multi-stage airbags respond according to accident severity. All in all, the control systems for these onboard safety features now have the processing power of the 'supercomputers' used in space exploration 25 years ago.
With such an impressive array of innovations, & a dedicated team of engineers working around-the-clock to continuously improve the standards of driver safety, Mercedes-Benz continues to be the forerunner of efficient automotive safety systems.
