Active and passive safety have been core values of the Mercedes-Benz brand for many decades now. The company’s in-house accident research department was established 50 years ago, and in 2002 PRE-SAFE® heralded a new era in the field of preventive occupant protection. PRE-SAFE® is able to prepare vehicles and their occupants for an impending accident, thus ensuring that the protective potential of seat belts and airbags is exploited to the full, for example.
Experimental Safety Vehicle (ESF) 2019 – PRE-SAFE® Child: Connected child safety seat with PRE-SAFE® functions – extended protection for the little ones.
To protect the youngest passengers, Mercedes-Benz has presented a special seat with PRE-SAFE® function in ESF 2019. This represents a very special contribution to this year’s “Child Safety Day”, which is organised by the Federal Association “Mehr Sicherheit für Kinder e.V.” and has been held annually on 10 June since 2000. The event is intended first and foremost to instil an awareness of accident hazards in parents and children. Child Safety Day focuses on a different safety hazard for children each year. In 2019 the spotlight is on “Making the home safe together”, with the aim of drawing attention to hazards for children in the home. In the broadest sense of the word, “home” now also extends to the car in which the family heads off into the weekend or on holiday. The priority here is on safe travel.
Added safety through monitoring of the child seat installation process
The onus is first and foremost on parents to ensure safe travel for children – be they in the front passenger seat or in the rear seats. A study published by insurance company accident researchers (UDV) in October 2018 found that almost one in two child seats are not correctly installed in the car. 48 percent of the 1042 children examined were not correctly secured in their child seats. The main causes were seat installation errors and incorrect belt fastening.
Experimental-Sicherheits-Fahrzeug (ESF) 2019 – PRE-SAFE® Child: Vernetzter Kindersitz mit PRE-SAFE® Funktionen. Vor einem drohenden Crash werden präventiv die Gurte des Kindersitzes gestrafft und die Seitenaufprallschutz-Elemente ausgefahren, wenn die PRE-SAFE® Auslöseschwelle erreicht wird.
Experimental Safety Vehicle (ESF) 2019 – PRE-SAFE® Child: Connected child safety seat with PRE-SAFE® functions. Before an impending crash, the seat belts of the child safety seat are preventively tensioned and side-mounted impact protection elements are extended if the triggering threshold of PRE-SAFE® is reached.
The networked child seat with PRE-SAFE® Child (from birth to age four/ 40 – 105 cm, to 18 kg: rearward-facing up to 15 months), which has been unveiled in the ESF 2019 Experimental Safety Vehicle, reduces the risk of such incorrect installation. The child seat is connected with the vehicle via a wireless link and equipped with its own installation monitoring system: eight symbols directly on the seat guide the user through the individual installation steps in self-explanatory manner and indicate when the seat has been fitted correctly. The link with the vehicle means that installation of the seat can also be checked and monitored on the media display from the driver’s seat and the front passenger seat.
Added safety through belt pretensioning and side impact protection
The special protective functions of the child seat are also activated by wireless connection. When the vehicle’s sensors detect a PRE-SAFE®-relevant driving situation, the child seat’s five-point belt system is tensioned within milliseconds and a side impact protection element is extended. The great advantage of this system is that thanks to the tensioned belt, the child is more firmly and accurately fixed in the seat and belt slack is reduced. The loads acting on the child during an impact can be reduced substantially in this way. The side impact protection elements also follow this approach.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rodolfo Schöneburg, whose remit as a Head of Center at Mercedes-Benz includes vehicle safety, explains: “We have realised a virtual crumple zone in ESF 2019. This means that crucial measures to protect the passengers and other people involved in an accident can be implemented before an impending accident actually occurs. This also extends to safety in the rear seats, particularly with regard to improved protection for children.”
Prof. Schöneburg is convinced that PRE-SAFE® Child will serve to reduce the number of children injured in traffic accidents.
Added safety through monitoring of vital signs
Further highlights of the PRE-SAFE® child seat are an integrated camera and special sensors to monitor the child’s temperature, pulse and breathing and to establish whether the child is asleep. These additional features are useful above all when children under 15 months are correctly transported in a rearward-facing position on the rear seat. During the journey, animations (e.g. “Everything OK” or “Child waking up”) on the media display provide information about the state of the child, without distracting the driver from the traffic to any substantial degree. The display is intuitive to understand, and the system requires no additional mirrors in the interior. When the vehicle is stationary, at traffic lights, it is additionally possible to switch briefly to a live video image on the media display. If required, and with the help of the Mercedes me App, all the vital signs can also be transferred to a smartphone during a journey, e.g. to inform the other parent about the child’s condition. This child seat with PRE-SAFE® functions represents a vision which has been realised as a prototype. It has not yet been decided whether such a seat will go into series production. It is highly likely that many of the presented innovations will be implemented at some point in the future, however.
MobileKids: Greater safety outside of the vehicle, too
Mercedes-Benz is concerned not only with protecting the occupants of its vehicles, but also with helping to ensure the safety of all road users. Especially the youngest people on the roads. MobileKids, a road safety initiative which was launched in 2001, aims to ensure children are well prepared to cope with the hazards of road traffic. More than two million children have taken part in the initiative to date. At https://www.mobilekids.net/de/start children aged between six and ten can learn the basics of safe behaviour in road traffic in a fun way. MobileKids offers extensive information and teaching materials for parents and teachers, competitions for educational establishments and a wide variety of online content and activities. As such, every day is child safety day at Mercedes-Benz. MobileKids is part of the “Daimler WeCare” initiative. As a globally operative group, we help to promote social and societal development around the world.
