VW Passat Touts Safety for Children

Volkswagen now offers new integrated child seats in the Passat and Passat Estate. The seats for children between three and twelve years old (weight class II to III) offer protection for frontal, rear and side-on crashes. They are operated with minimum effort and are fully collapsible in the rear seat bench.

Around 50 percent of all child road casualties die as passengers inside vehicles because they were not or were wrongly secured. According to European studies more than half of all child seats are wrongly fitted or used. Integrated child seats minimize these risks, as wrong fitting is not possible. There is no annoying fitting and removal of often bulky mobile child seats.

The newly designed child seat in the Passat is fitted into the rear seat bench either individually or as a pair, and offers essential improvements over earlier integrated solutions -- for example head and lap side support. During side impact the side head restraints minimize the relative movement of head to chest and form an important addition to the restraint systems. The load on the child's sensitive cervical vertebrae is reduced by up to 60 percent. The side head restraints are simply fastened to the brackets of the existing standard head restraints with the help of a patented snap-on mechanism and are just as easily removed. The function of the rear side airbags remains fully preserved.

If required, the foldable seat surfaces, the so-called "Booster" can be pulled up with a handle on the front of the seat bench until it clicks into place in the raised position. Folding side supports offer optimal restraint for the child's lap and thighs. When the seat is lowered back down in the rear bench, the side supports automatically fold into the horizontal out-of-use position. When not in use, the seat surfaces fit into the rear bench and do not interfere with the seat comfort for adults.

During a crash, the rear section of the raised seat surface automatically sinks in a fraction of a second, effectively preventing the child from slipping under the belt. This intentional and controlled "collapse" of the booster, systematically absorbs impact energy. This patented mechanism protects most during frontal collisions.