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The 6 most important safety components of your car

Content

1. Safety belts

2. Safety passenger compartment and crumple zone

3. Airbags in the car

4. Anti-lock braking system ABS

5. Electronic Stability System ESP

6. Safe interior

While traffic density and thus the number of traffic accidents are increasing, the number of traffic fatalities is steadily decreasing. This is mainly due to modern safety systems and the optimised design of modern vehicles. Here you can find out which safety components make driving safer and protect you in the event of an accident.

Safety belts

Seat belts in cars have made driving much safer. In the event of an accident, or during severe deceleration due to braking manoeuvres, the vehicle occupants remain safely in their seats. Thanks to the belts, the occupants cannot be thrown out of the vehicle or bounce awkwardly inside.

Seat belts are one of the most important passive safety systems in a car. In today’s cars, the belts on the front seats as well as on the back seat are designed as automatic belts that adjust themselves to the occupants. In addition to the belts, belt tensioners are also part of the belt system in many modern vehicles.

These belt tensioners tighten the belt if an accident occurs. This provides additional safety. Seat belts for cars can be bought cheaply second-hand, just like seat belt buckles and belt tensioners. Seat belts for the front are available as well as seat belts for the rear. When buying used seat belts, you should always make sure that the webbing is in perfect condition.

Safety passenger compartment and crumple zone

The structure of a car’s body contributes significantly to occupant safety, and therefore also belongs to the safety systems. Design features such as the safety passenger cell and the so-called crumple zone ensure particular safety. While the designers of early cars still thought that a body that was as stable as possible was particularly safe, a rethink has taken place since the 1960s at the latest.

Today’s cars have crumple zones that absorb the energy of the impact in the event of an accident and can thus reduce its effect. For this purpose, the zones at the front and rear of the vehicle deform in a certain way, they literally crumple together. In modern vehicles, on the other hand, the so-called passenger cell is designed to be particularly stable. This structural unit encloses the interior of the car and protects the occupants to a particularly high degree.

The safety passenger cell is particularly rigid and provides the necessary survival space for the vehicle occupants. The doors of modern vehicles can also absorb energy, but at the same time have side impact protection. Due to their design features, body parts of modern cars are often irreparably damaged even in minor accidents. However, car parts such as doors for the front, doors for the rear, bonnets or tailgates can often be bought cheaply second-hand.

Airbags in the car

The airbag system is one of the great milestones in automotive safety. The airbag is an airbag that opens and inflates in a fraction of a second in the event of an accident. This prevents the vehicle occupants from hitting their heads against the steering wheel or dashboard, for example. Previously, seat belts alone could not always prevent this effectively. Airbags can also effectively reduce the effects of a side impact in an accident.

Today, airbags in modern cars are therefore not only found in the steering wheel or dashboard, but also in the seats, roof rails, footwells or doors of the vehicle. At the heart of the airbag system is the airbag control unit, which brings together numerous vehicle data and ultimately activates the airbags as required. The sensors of the airbag control are installed in the control unit as well as in other places. These include acceleration sensors as well as crash sensors or pressure sensors for the side airbags.

If the ABS control unit detects an accident, it triggers the required airbags. However, an airbag is only effective in combination with the seat belt. Used ABS control units can be easily purchased for most vehicle types, as can complete airbags. The same applies to airbag sensors, airbag relays or a used airbag wiring harness.

Anti-lock braking system ABS

The ABS system or anti-lock braking system is one of the most important active safety systems in a car. This system counteracts the occurrence of accidents in advance by preventing the wheels from locking during braking. In this way, the vehicle remains steerable for the driver even during emergency braking. The car does not slide uncontrollably across the road, and at the same time the driver can take corrective action by means of a steering movement.

To prevent the wheels from locking, the ABS system works by repeatedly lowering and raising the brake pressure. A number of components are necessary for this. For example, cars with ABS have wheel sensors to detect the wheel speed, which are also called ABS sensors. If one of the wheels were to lock, this would be detected by the ABS system via the wheel speed sensor. The data from the wheel speed sensors, as well as other data, is processed in the ABS control unit.

The control unit in turn controls the ABS pump, which is the central unit combining pump, valves and their control. From here, the pulsation of the brake pressure at the individual brakes is triggered as required. All parts of the ABS system, such as the ABS control unit, ABS sensors or other ABS brake parts, can also be bought second-hand. Care should be taken to ensure that the ABS parts in question fit the intended vehicle model exactly.

Electronic Stability System ESP

Similar to ABS, the Electronic Stability System or Electronic Stability Program, ESP for short, is designed to prevent accidents from happening in the first place. Unlike ABS, however, ESP does not intervene in the braking process, but prevents the vehicle from skidding or swerving. It also prevents the vehicle from understeering or oversteering in order to give the driver better control over the vehicle in extreme situations.

The ESP system causes the automatic braking of individual wheels via the brakes. Similar to the ABS, it uses data from sensors to detect the wheel speed. At the same time, the current position of the steering wheel is recorded via the steering angle sensor, as is the vehicle’s lateral acceleration or any rotational movement of the vehicle via other sensors.

The system is controlled by the ESP control unit, which collects all the data. If the car’s movement deviates from the intended path, or if the vehicle starts to skid, the stability system intervenes. This is done by actively braking individual wheels, even without the driver depressing the brake pedal. Components such as the ESP control unit, ESP sensors or ESP contacts such as ESP switches are often available cheaply as used parts.

Safe interior

In accidents, vehicle occupants can be injured not only by external factors, but also by the vehicle itself. As early as the 1960s, automotive designers therefore began to focus on making the interior of vehicles safer. This included, for example, the design of safe steering wheels that could collapse in the event of an accident.

The safety steering wheel was connected to a safety steering column, which prevented the steering wheel from entering the interior. Headrests on the seats soon became standard equipment, as did soft dashboards. These safety-relevant components can also be bought cheaply second-hand.

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