Safe driving
Safety
Saf e driving
Advice about driving Saf et
y first! This chapter contains important information,
tips, suggestions and warnings that you
shoul d r
ead and consider for both your own
safety and for your passengers
Safe driving
The correct sitting positions for the driver and
passengers ar e sho
wn bel
ow.
If your physical constitution prevents you
from maintaining the correct sitting position,
contact a specialised workshop for help with
any special devices. The seat belt and airbag
can only provide optimum protection if a cor-
rect sitting position is adopted. SEAT recom-
mends taking your car in for technical serv-
ice.
For your own safety and to reduce the risk of
injury in the event of an accident or sudden
braking or manoeuvre, SEAT recommend the
following positions:
Valid for all vehicle occupants:
Safety
you may sustain injuries to your arms,
hands and head.
Danger of injuries due to an incor-
rect sitting position
Number of seats
Depending on the equipment, your vehicl
e
has a t
otal of five or seven seats. Each seat is
equipped with a seat belt.
5 seats Seats in the
front Seats in the
second ro wSeats in the
thir
d row
2 3
Safety
Seat belts
Why w ear a seat belt
Intr oduction Check the condition of all the seat belts at
regul
ar int
ervals. If you notice that the belt
webbing, fittings, retractor mechanism or
buckle of any of the belts is damaged, the
belt must be replaced immediately by a spe-
cialised workshop
Seat belts
Warning lamp Fig. 84
Warning lamp on the instrument panel. Fig. 85
Example of seat belt status display for
the r ear seats (her e
, a 7-seat vehicle) on the in-
strument panel: upper part, second row; lower
part, third row. i
It lights up or flashes red
Driver
Safety
serious injury and reduce the risk of being
thr o
wn out of the v
ehicle in case of an acci-
dent.
Vehicle occupants wearing their seat belts
correctly benefit greatly from the ability of
the belts to absorb kinetic energy. In addition,
the front part of your vehicle and other pas-
sive safety features (such as the airbag sys-
tem) are designed to absorb the kinetic ener-
gy released in a collision. Taken together, all
these features reduce the releasing kinetic
energy and consequently, the risk of injury.
This is why it is so important to fasten seat
belts before every trip, even when "just driving
around the corner".
Ensure that your passengers wear their seat
belts as well. Accident statistics have shown
that wearing seat belts is an effective means
of substantially reducing the risk of injury and
improving the chances of survival when in-
volved in a serious accident. Furthermore,
properly worn seat belts improve the protec-
tion provided by airbags in the event of an
accident. For this reason, wearing a seat belt
is required by law in most countries.
Although your vehicle is equipped with air-
bags, the seat belts must be fastened and
worn. The front airbags, for example, are only
triggered in some cases of head-on collision.
The front airbags will not be triggered during
minor frontal or side collisions, rear-end colli-
sions, rollovers or accidents in which the air- bag trigger threshold value in the control unit
is not exceeded.
Ther
efore, you should always wear your seat
belt and ensure that all vehicle occupants
have fastened their seat belts properly before
you drive off!
Head-on collisions and the laws of
physics Fig. 87
A driver not wearing a seat belt is
thr o
wn f
orward violently. Fig. 88
The unbelted rear passenger is thrown
forw ar
d violently, hitting the driver wearing a
seat belt The effects of the laws of physics in the case
of a head-on collision ar
e easy t
o e
xplain: the
moment a vehicle starts moving, a type of en-
ergy called “kinetic energy” starts acting on
both the vehicle and its passengers.
The amount of “kinetic energy” depends on
the speed of the vehicle and on the weight of
the vehicle and of its passengers. The higher
the speed and the greater the weight, the
more energy there is to be “absorbed” in an
accident.
The most significant factor, however, is the
speed of the vehicle. If the speed doubles
from 25 km/h (15 mph) to 50 km/h (30 mph),
for example, the corresponding kinetic ener-
gy is multiplied by four.
Because the vehicle occupants in our exam-
ple are not restrained by seat belts, in the
event of crashing against a wall, all of the
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