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Recently, Weibo celebrity @理记 posted a post complaining about the zero-gravity safety seats in cars. The blogger said that humans have invented cars for more than a hundred years, but why is there only the term "sitting in a car" but not the term "lying in a car"? This is because the existing seat belt technology cannot guarantee the safety of lying in a collision.

The blogger further explained that zero-gravity seats are not some kind of black technology that is difficult to solve, and any car company can make them, even a hundred years ago. However, they are basically not made abroad, because if a car accident occurs abroad and serious bodily injury occurs due to zero-gravity seats, the car company will suffer hundreds of millions or even billions of claims.

The blogger's remarks also sparked discussions among many netizens. So, are zero-gravity chairs safe?

What exactly is a zero-gravity chair?

Before we focus on whether zero-gravity seats are safe, let's first understand what zero-gravity seats are. Zero-Gravity seats are specially designed seats that are designed to provide maximum riding comfort. The name zero-gravity is inspired by the weightlessness of outer space. Through the design of the seat layout, passengers can feel a sense of weightlessness and relax to the greatest extent. Previously, many electric massage sofas have provided similar functions.

Compared with traditional car seats, zero-gravity seats have higher manufacturing costs and require more space inside the car, so they are generally only found in higher-level SUVs and MPVs. Huawei and BAIC's Xiangjie also used this function for the first time on the rear seats of executive-class sedans. At the same time, as the industry becomes more and more competitive, this configuration is also showing a downward trend. Many entry-level SUVs and sedans have also begun to offer the option of zero-gravity seats.

Zero-gravity seats have become so popular, so what can they bring to car owners or passengers?

Of course, the relaxation brought by the zero-gravity chair makes it easy to find the most comfortable posture for yourself. The body pressure is reduced, and the spine and muscles of the whole body can also relax.

Zero-gravity chairs generally use better filling materials and a complete support system. At the same time, the backrest angle, leg support, and headrest height of a good zero-gravity chair can be adjusted. It can even be equipped with heating, massage and other functions.

Because the zero-gravity chair allows the human body to maintain the minimum load in the most relaxed state, you will not feel tired even if you maintain the same sitting posture for a long time. It can also fully support the chest, lumbar spine, and pelvis, reducing the burden on muscles and spine.

It is precisely these relaxation functions that make many car owners choose the zero-gravity seat mode when buying a car. Not only can you relax for a while when parking, but you can also relax better during lunch breaks or long-distance driving.

Zero-gravity chair mode should focus on safety

In fact, as the blogger mentioned above, using a zero-gravity seat while driving does pose great risks.

Not long ago, a video of a "whip test" experiment of a zero-gravity seat in an unfolded state was exposed online. From the video, it can be seen that the experimental dummy model completely detached from the seat and dived out. The seat belt did not play any role at all at this time and might even strangle the person's neck.

Seat whiplash test is an important safety performance test method. Whiplash injuries occur very frequently in low-speed rear-end collision accidents. This injury may cause long-term discomfort or even permanent damage to the neck.

The above test method is to fix the driver's side seat and restraint system of the test vehicle on a mobile trolley in the same way as the original vehicle structure. The trolley is launched with a specific acceleration waveform to simulate the rear collision process. A special dummy (such as the BioRID III dummy) is placed on the seat to measure the injury to the neck during the collision.

However, many car brands provide the option of zero-gravity seat mode, and in order to ensure safety, they will prohibit entering the D gear in zero-gravity seat mode. Although some brands will remind you not to use the zero-gravity seat mode while driving in the instruction manual and on the large screen, there are still many models that can still use the zero-gravity mode after being put into the D gear.

Here, we also strongly recommend that all car companies should put safety first. No matter which passenger position in the car is using the zero-gravity seat mode, they must not enter the driving mode.

Interestingly, the foreign automakers mentioned by the blogger could have done it a long time ago, but the main reason they didn’t do it was the high cost. The car seats that can enter the zero-gravity seat mode have more high-strength structural parts. Given the industrial chain costs of overseas auto powers, such configurations are unlikely to appear on 100,000-yuan models. Moreover, the problem can be avoided by “forbidding entering the D gear in zero-gravity mode”, and it is certainly not because of the fear of being fined billions.

Xiaoxiang Morning News reporter Hu Xiong

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