Abstract: The impact wall element (1) for gentle deceleration of a human body impacting an obstacle has a two-zone structure. The first zone comprises a lightweight, plastically deformable sandwich cover plate (10) with two thin cover layers (11, 12) and an intermediately positioned, lightweight, deformable support core (13). In the second zone are provided discreet, spaced, plastically deformable spacing elements (21), which carry the cover plate and are supported on a fixed substrate (5). The thickness D2 of the second zone is more than twice the thickness D1 of the first zone. The lightweight wall element leads to a gentle interception on the shortest possible path, particularly in the case of a head impact in motor vehicles or aircraft.