Final answer:
The most effective way to reduce injuries during a collision is to wear your seat belt, as it spreads out the forces of the crash and works with other safety features like airbags and crumple zones designed to increase the time of impact, thereby reducing the force on passengers.
Step-by-step explanation:
The most effective way to reduce injuries in a collision is to wear your seat belt. This is because seat belts are designed to restrain the passengers in a vehicle by spreading out the forces exerted during a crash over the strongest parts of the human body. In the event of high-speed collisions, crumple zones in cars help to protect the passengers by increasing the time of impact, which effectively reduces the force experienced by the occupants. This is achieved by allowing parts of the vehicle to crumple in a controlled fashion, absorbing the energy of the collision and increasing the duration over which the impact occurs, rather than transmitting the full force in an instant to the vehicle's occupants.
From an impulse standpoint, the longer it takes for a collision to occur, the lower the force that passengers will experience. To calculate the forces experienced by a person in a vehicle collision, we can look at the scenario where a car moving at 10 m/s crashes into a tree and stops in 0.26 s. If the mass of the passenger is 70 kg, the formula to calculate force is change in momentum over time (which translates to mass times change in velocity over time). By wearing a seat belt and having airbags, the time over which the collision occurs is increased, thus decreasing the force exerted on the passengers.