Safety Restraints; Personal Safety System; How Does The Personal Safety System Work? - Lincoln 2010 MKX Owner's Manual

Seating and Safety Restraints

SAFETY RESTRAINTS

Personal Safety System

The Personal Safety System provides an improved overall level of
frontal crash protection to front seat occupants and is designed to help
further reduce the risk of airbag-related injuries. The system is able to
analyze different occupant conditions and crash severity before activating
the appropriate safety devices to help better protect a range of
occupants in a variety of frontal crash situations.
Your vehicle's Personal Safety System consists of:
• Driver and passenger dual-stage airbag supplemental restraints.
• Front outboard safety belts with pretensioners, energy management
retractors (first row only), and safety belt usage sensors.
• Driver's seat position sensor.
• Front passenger sensing system
• "Passenger airbag off" or "pass airbag off" indicator lamp
• Front crash severity sensors.
• Restraints Control Module (RCM) with impact and safing sensors.
• Restraint system warning light and back-up tone.
• The electrical wiring for the airbags, crash sensor(s), safety belt
pretensioners, front safety belt usage sensors, driver seat position
sensor, front passenger sensing system, and indicator lights.

How does the Personal Safety System work?

The Personal Safety System can adapt the deployment strategy of your
vehicle's safety devices according to crash severity and occupant
conditions. A collection of crash and occupant sensors provides
information to the Restraints Control Module (RCM). During a crash, the
RCM may activate the safety belt pretensioners and/or either one or both
stages of the dual-stage airbag supplemental restraints based on crash
severity and occupant conditions.
The fact that the pretensioners or airbags did not activate for both front
seat occupants in a collision does not mean that something is wrong with
the system. Rather, it means the Personal Safety System determined
the accident conditions (crash severity, belt usage, etc.) were not
appropriate to activate these safety devices. Front airbags are designed
to activate only in frontal and near-frontal collisions (not rollovers, side
impacts or rear impacts) unless the collision causes sufficient
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