Saab Scores Big with Active Head Restraints

Saab has a great reputation for safety, but it often gets overlooked due to the fact that Volvo has quite masterfully positioned themselves as the 'owner' of the safety message. But if you know and understand Saabs, you feel quite comfortable as you experience New England roads and New England drivers.

So it was great to see the news that Saab scored top marks in a test of car seats by Thatcham, a research group of British Insurers. In the tests, Thatcham measured car seats and looked at the position of the head restraints compared to the head of the dummy; in a dynamic test the seat with the dummy was mounted on a sled, which was accelerated in 0.1 seconds to 10 mph to study the effects of a rear-end collision.

Seats with the Saab Active Head Restraints (SAHR) fared better than all others in the tests. Statistics of the insurance claims show that there were 42% fewer complaints of whiplash after collisions with the Saab 9-3 with SAHR, compared to its predecessor without this system.

The survey also showed that only 16% of the cars scored "good" and 36% scored "poor" when it comes to head and neck restraints and protection.