Final answer:
Cars have various safety features categorized into passive, active, and preventative. Passive safety features like airbags and crumple zones protect passengers during a crash by absorbing energy and extending the duration of impact. Active and preventative features, such as ABS and rear-view cameras, aim to prevent accidents and improve driver awareness.
Step-by-step explanation:
Cars are designed to keep passengers safe, incorporating various safety features that can be categorized into several types. Here are three categories of safety features and examples of each:
- Passive Safety Features: These include components that provide protection without any active input from the driver or passengers. Examples are airbags which deploy upon impact to minimize serious injuries, and crumple zones in a car’s structure that absorb the energy of a collision, thus reducing the force transmitted to occupants.
- Active Safety Features: These technologies help to prevent accidents before they occur. Examples include anti-lock braking systems (ABS), which prevent the wheels from locking during braking, and electronic stability control (ESC), which helps to maintain control of the car during skids.
- Preventative Safety Features: These aim to reduce the likelihood of an accident by augmenting driver awareness and response. Examples include rear-view cameras that aid in backing up and blind-spot detection systems that alert drivers to unseen vehicles in adjacent lanes.
These safety features align with the principles of physics, particularly the concept of impulse. They work to reduce the net force through increasing the duration of impact, an application of Newton’s second law of motion. The seat belt, for example, is a passive safety feature that helps to distribute the forces experienced during a crash across more durable parts of the passenger’s body.