The safety of modern vehicles has reached such a high standard that experts view the remaining potential for improvement of conventional restraint systems as nothing more than minimal. However the use of information gathered during the pre-crash phase added to the combination of preventive and conventional restraint systems can reveal additional potential.

One example of this is the reversible pretensioner of the PRE-SAFE® system, launched in 2002, which can hold occupants in their position shortly before a potential collision and thus reduce forward displacement to offer improved protection in an accident.

This approach was further developed with the introduction of PRE-SAFE® Impulse, which debuts in the current S-Class of MJ 2013. PRE-SAFE® Impulse systems rapidly accelerate occupants at an early phase of the crash by moving them in the direction of the impact force so that the difference in kinetic energy between the vehicle and occupants can start to be reduced as early as possible. As a consequence the total energy does not have to be dissipated entirely during the crash itself, but is distributed over a minor initial impact and a major impact whose intensity is reduced accordingly.

The new PRE-SAFE® Impulse Side System, a pre-impacting restraint system, does not only applies this idea for side crash but brings the concept one step further. Previous measures for improving side impact protection were primarily implemented on the vehicle itself and did not directly influence the occupants prior to the crash. With PRE-SAFE® Impulse Side, a defined energy, is transferred to the occupant, who is set in motion already before the collision occurs. Therefore PRE-SAFE® Impulse Side is the very first of a new generation of preimpacting restraint system whose field of action will be extended prior to the collision due to the integration of active and passive safety.

To this end, the PRE-SAFE® Impulse Side system uses a 360-degree sensor system, which permanently senses the car surroundings, to anticipate an unavoidable collision. Using numerical simulation as well as sled and vehicle testing, relevant occupant loads have been shown to be reduced by 30 percent on average with the use of PRE-SAFE® Impulse Side.