Why are passengers thrown forward against their seat belts when a car stops suddenly?

When a car stops suddenly, passengers are thrown forward against their seat belts due to the principle of inertia. Inertia is the tendency of an object to resist changes in its state of motion. According to Newton's first law of motion, an object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an external force.

In this scenario, when the car abruptly stops, the external force is the brakes applied to the vehicle. However, the passengers inside the car continue to move forward at the same speed due to their inertia. Their bodies want to keep moving forward, which is why they lurch against the seat belts that are designed to restrain them and prevent them from continuing in that motion.

This phenomenon illustrates the basic principles of physics that govern motion and highlight the importance of seat belts as safety devices. The incorrect options relate to other concepts in physics. For instance, acceleration pertains to the change in speed or direction of an object, momentum refers to the product of mass and velocity of an object in motion, and terminal velocity is the constant speed an object reaches when the force of gravity is balanced by the resistance of the medium (like air) through which it is moving. These concepts, while related to motion