Automotive vehicle occupant protection system

Abstract

In an automotive vehicle occupant protection system, the vehicle body comprises a chassis and a vehicle body main part mounted on said chassis in a relatively moveable manner in a fore-and-aft direction, and an arrangement for engaging a vehicle body main part to the chassis under normal condition, and releasing the vehicle body main part from the chassis upon occurrence of a vehicle crash, and a bumper member provided on the chassis and adapted to collide with a stopper member provided on the vehicle body main part after a prescribed rearward travel of the chassis relative to the vehicle body main part. Thus, upon occurrence of a crash, the chassis having a substantial mass starts decelerating, and moves rearward with respect to the remaining part of the vehicle body. This in turn causes the tension of the seat belt to increase, and the restraint on the vehicle occupant to increase. This is followed by the application of a reverse deceleration to the chassis so that the initial sharp rise in the deceleration acting on the vehicle occupant is smoothly connected to the ride down state in which the vehicle occupant decelerates at the same rate as the vehicle body.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.