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The entire Renault range is designed to provide an optimum level of protection for all occupants: children and adults, in the front and rear seats, and in big and small cars alike.

Renault takes a twofold approach to protecting car occupants in the event of an accident: ensuring that the bodywork absorbs impacts and restraining passengers inside the cabin.
Sheet metal that crumples "intelligently", a rigid cabin and increasingly effective seatbelt/airbag systems all contribute to passive safety.

A biomechanical model of the human body

Vehicle architecture

The cabin is protected by programmed crumpling. Everyone has seen a wrecked car by the roadside with its front and rear folded up like an accordeon. It looks dramatic - but the accident was not necessarily fatal. Strange as it may seem, a safe car is one which crumples on impact.
Renault has spent a long time working on programmed buckling of the bodywork, both front and back. Those are the parts of the car that must absorb the impact, not the occupants.

The cabin, which acts as a survival cell, should not be flexible. A safe car should bend at the front and back while remaining rigid in the middle. For example, when a "tank-type" car crashes into a wall at 50kph, it will only crumple by 10cm and the driver will suffer an impact equivalent to 100 times his or her body weight, which is bound to be fatal. In a car with impact-absorbent architecture capable of crumpling by up to 80cm, the driver only suffers a fifth of the impact.

Programmed restraint

The second aspect of Renault's approach to safety, which it is working constantly to improve, is the system that protects the cabin occupants in the event of a collision. The Renault System for Restraint and Protection (SRP) sets out to minimize the effects of an impact.

In 1993 Renault was one of the first manufacturers to introduce airbags in its vehicles, as well as the pretensioner, which locks the seatbelt when an impact occurs. After numerous refinements, these features were incorporated into the three-point SRP system in 1997:
- The pretensioner, which is connected to the seatbelt buckle, restricts the extent to which a person can be thrown forward by pinning the belt across the chest.
- The load limiter reduces the pressure the belt exerts on the chest because this too could cause serious injury in the event of a violent impact.
- The controlled-deflation airbags, stored in the steering wheel on the driver's side and in the dashboard on the front passenger's side, absorb the impact.

The third-generation SRP, introduced in 2001, is still unmatched in the market. With twin-volume airbags and dual pretensioners, it can adapt to the violence of an impact.

Child safety

Restraint systems adapted to each age group

Children are not just small-scale copies of adults. Their safety is therefore worthy of study in its own right and has been the subject of very advanced research at Renault. The number one rule: all children should systematically be attached with systems suited to their age. About 30% of rear-seat passengers involved in accidents are children under ten.

The shape of a child's body (morphology) and the way it moves (kinematics) are not like those of an adult, so restraint systems have to be adapted to each age group. The systems devised by Renault are based on extensive expertise and research into the causes of accidents.
The entire Renault range is now fitted with the Isofix system, which was introduced in 1998. The Isofix standard ensures that child seats are correctly and firmly installed.

Up to age two, the child's neck must be protected. A baby's head accounts for half of its body weight and the neck remains very vulnerable until the age of two. To reduce the risk of injury and improve protection of the chest and abdomen, children should sit facing the rear in a shell seat, and of course their seatbelts should always be fastened (if the seat is not fitted with an Isofix system). This type of seat may be installed in the front if the car is fitted with an airbag that can be disabled.

From age two to four, it is still the child's head that needs most protection. Children should sit facing the front in an appropriate seat attached to the rear seat, with the seat belt fastened. This prevents them from being thrown against the back of the front seat in the event of a front impact.

From age four to ten, the standard rear seatbelt still does not provide sufficient protection for children, and because they are small it could even cause abdominal injuries. A stable booster seat ensures that the three-point seatbelt is correctly positioned.Securely anchored in the seat, the belt holds the child's pelvis in place and reduces the risk of serious injury by 30%.