Safety Features to Consider When Buying a Family Car

Video Transcript

"Hello! My name is Steve Kennedy, and we are here at Warren Cliff Chrysler at London Ontario, Canada with tips to help you with your next buying decision. The next in our game plan is to look at the safety options on vehicles. Basically what you want to look at is ABS, which is an anti-lock brake system which helps in slippery conditions like winter we have right now; air bags whether they are dual air bags on the passenger side and driver side or even side air bags that they come with now depending on the model of your vehicle. There are also a lot of other things that go into the engineering of these vehicles as well. Each one of the doors has an inside anti-intrusion beam basically it is structurally reinforcing on all the doors to prevent against side impacts. Also the vehicles in front have what they call crumple zones which is basically if the car gets hit in the front the engine drops down and helps with the actual vehicle to absorb a lot of the accident damage on it. This is pretty much standard because it is pretty much legislative in all the vehicles but the different ones that you have to look at is of course the seat belts will always be there but it is the air bags and you should also know about the function, the anti lock brakes you should know exactly how they work. What ends up happening when you apply the anti-lock brakes you will feel some rebounding on the brake pedal. Basically what that is, is the anti-lock brake turning on and off to prevent the vehicles wheel from locking up, to give you greater control over when you are skating or when you are intense braking conditions. So it is a little bit different than normal condition because if you don’t have a vehicle with anti-lock brakes and you do hit the brakes, you know the tires lock up and the vehicle tends to fish tail and start going all over the place. With the anti-lock brakes, it prevents that because it oscillates the brake caliper from putting pressure on the brake disc and that basically means let’s you maintain control of the vehicle but with the ABS and the air bags are pretty much for safety the ones you have to look at."