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A irbag
system
Important
information
Importance of wearing safety belts and
sitting properly
Airbags are only supplemental restraints. For
airbags to do their job, occupants must always
properly wear their safety belts and be in a prop-
er seating position.
For your safety and the safety of your passen-
gers, before driving off, always:
""Adjust the driver's seat and steering wheel
properly
9
page 135,
""Adjust the front passenger's seat properly
9page 64,
.,. Wear safety belts properly
9
page 145,
.,. Always properly use the proper child restraint
to protect children
9
page 171.
In a collision airbags must inflate within the blink
of an eye and with considerable force. The sup-
plemental airbags can cause injuries if the driver
or the front seat passenger is not seated proper-
ly. Therefore in order to help the airbag to do its
job, it is important, both as a driver and as a pas-
senger to sit properly at all times .
By keeping room between your body and the
steering wheel and the front of the passenger
compartment,
the airbag can inflate fully and
completely and provide supplemental
protection
in certain frontal collisions
o page 135, Correct
passenger seating positions .
For details on the
operation of the seat adjustment controls
opage 64.
It 's especially important that children are proper-
ly restrained
9 page 171 .
There is a lot that the driver and the passengers
can and must do to help the individual safety fea-
tures installed in your Audi work together as a
system.
Proper seating position is important so that the
front airbag on the driver side can do its job. If
you have a physical impairment or condition that
prevents you from sitting properly on the driver
seat with the safety belt properly fastened and
Airbag
system
reaching the pedals, special modifications to
your vehicle may be necessary.
Contact your authorized Audi dealer, or call Audi
Customer Relations at 1-800-822-2834.
When the airbag system deploys, a gas generator
will fill the airbags, break open the padded cov-
ers, and inflate between the steering wheel and
the driver and between the instrument
panel and
the front passenger. The airbags will deflate im-
mediately after deployment so that the front oc-
cupants can see through the windshield again
without interruption.
All of this takes place in the blink of an eye, so
fast that many people don't even realize that the
airbags have deployed. The airbags also inflate
with a great deal of force and nothing should be
in their way when they deploy. Front airbags in
combination with properly worn safety belts slow
down and limit the occupant's forward move-
ment . Together they help to prevent the driver
and front seat passenger from hitting parts of
the inside the vehicle while reducing the forces
acting on the occupant during the crash. In this
way they help to reduce the risk of injury to the
head and upper body in the crash. Airbags do not
protect the arms or the lower parts of the body.
Both front airbags will not inflate in all frontal
collisions. The triggering of the airbag system de-
pends on the vehicle deceleration rate caused by
the collision and registered by the electronic con-
trol unit . If this rate is below the reference value
programmed into t he control unit, the airbags
will not be triggered, even though the car may be
badly damaged as a result of the collision . Vehi-
cle damage, repair costs or even the lack of vehi-
cle damage is not necessarily an indication of
whether an airbag should inflate or not.
It
is not possible to define a range of vehicle
speeds that will cover every possible kind and an-
gle of impact that will always trigger the airbags ,
since the circumstances will vary considerably be-
tween one collision and another. Important fac-
tors include, for example, the nature (hard or
soft) of the object which the car hits, the angle of
impact, vehicle speed, etc . The front airbags will
IIJJ,
151
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