Active safety

The first, mainly in the United States, refers to automobile safety systems that help avoid accidents, such as good steering and brakes.

In this context, passive safety refers to features that help reduce the effects of an accident, such as seat belts, airbags and strong body structures.

This use is essentially interchangeable with the terms primary and secondary safety that tend to be used worldwide in standard UK English.

However, active safety is increasingly being used to describe systems that use an understanding of the state of the vehicle to both avoid and minimise the effects of a crash.

This has traditionally referred to non-complex systems such as good visibility from the vehicle and low interior noise levels.