Motor vehicle safety arrangement and method

A safety arrangement for a motor vehicle for positioning an occupant properly relative to a back rest of a vehicle seat and restraining the occupant thus positioned on the vehicle seat in preparation of the vehicle potentially being subject to a rear-end collision, wherein the vehicle includes a safety belt associated with the vehicle seat and an electric reversible safety belt retractor associated with the safety belt, the safety arrangement comprising:

• a rearward-looking detection system for detecting and classifying collision risk for an approaching object;
• at least one sensor for monitoring one or more vehicle parameters;
• and
• a control unit arranged to determine a driving state as critical or non-critical from the one or more monitored vehicle parameters, wherein the control unit is operable to control the electric reversible safety belt retractor to apply a predetermined pullback force on the safety belt to pull the occupant into the vehicle seat in response to the collision risk for an approaching object being classified as high within a predetermined time of an indicated critical driving state.