Safety
Some main innovations of the W124 series were related to occupant safety. Derived from the Mercedes 190 (W201), with which the W124 shares the basic layout, its likewise edgy body was designed to withstand an offset-crash in a concrete barrier at some 35 mp/h without serious harm to the occupants and a largely undamaged passenger cabin, a windshield that stays in place and doors easily opened without special recovery tools. This crash-test configuration became the base for the Euro-NCAP procedure currently being the standard crash-test configuration in the EU. Unlike Euro-NCAP, Mercedes required the body of the W124 to withstand an offset impact from the front and from the rear.
The W124 also featured a driver's side airbag (optional in Europe, later standard in the USA), height-adjustable seat belts with electronic-mechanical pre-tensioneers (standard) for both front passengers, rear seat belts which automatically adapted to the size of the passengers (standard), pedals that were moved inversely in a frontal impact (away from the drivers feet and in the direction of the bulkhead separating the cabin from the engine) and door arm rests with deformable elements designed to reduce abdominal injury risk resulting from a side impact.
The dashboard made of impact-absorbing, artificial foam was reinforced with a thin aluminium layer which effectively prevented hoses, valves, housings and other components from heating and engine from penetrating through the dash board inside the passenger cabin in a severe impact. Also, the passenger glove box featured a defined point of rupture, which considerably reduced the probability of front passenger injuries.
Apart from the Mercedes 190, the W124 was the first serially manufactured car in history to see widespread use of light-weight high-strength steels, which today are a standard in car design.
From late 1988 on, the W124 was one of the first cars available with a passengers side front-airbag as an option, initially only in Europe, and from 1990 onwards in North America.
Read more about this topic: Mercedes-Benz W124
Famous quotes containing the word safety:
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.... Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.”
—Joseph Heller (b. 1923)
“[As teenager], the trauma of near-misses and almost- consequences usually brings us to our senses. We finally come down someplace between our parents’ safety advice, which underestimates our ability, and our own unreasonable disregard for safety, which is our childlike wish for invulnerability. Our definition of acceptable risk becomes a product of our own experience.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)
“He had a gentleman-like frankness in his behaviour, and as a great point of honour as a minister can have, especially a minister at the head of the treasury, where numberless sturdy and insatiable beggars of condition apply, who cannot all be gratified, nor all with safety be refused.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)