Even when belted in, rear seat occupants of modern vehicles are being increasingly injured in front-facing crashes according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), highlighted a need to improve rear seat restraint systems.
“Manufacturers have put a lot of work into improving protection for drivers and front-seat passengers. Our moderate overlap front crash test and, more recently, our driver-side and passenger-side small overlap front tests are a big reason why,” IIHS President David Harkey says. “We hope a new evaluation will spur similar progress in the back seat.”
The report tracked specific types of injuries those age 6 or older sustained in such crashes, which IIHS hopes to work into a new front crash test that will better track occupant protection. In all, the study examined 117 crashes in which rear-seat occupants were killed or seriously injured. The most common injury suffered was chest-related, followed by head injuries. Most fatal cases should have been survivable, but the IIHS says that back seats haven’t benefited from the same restraint advancements seen in the front and even sides in recent years.
Front seats, for example, come with airbags in front — and often, the side — that couple with force limited seat belts and tensioners that tighten those belts. Back seats tend to have side airbag protection but lack front airbags, tensioners and force limiters. Frontal collisions can bounce rear passengers off the vehicle interior, and a lack of force limiters can cause their seatbelts to inflict chest injuries in the process.
“Child restraints are so effective that when young children in properly used restraints die, it’s usually because the crash was so severe that improving the restraints wouldn’t have made a difference,” Jessica Jermakian, the lead author of the paper and IIHS Senior Research Engineer, said. “The fact that our sample had mostly survivable crashes tells us that we need to do a better job restraining adults and older children in the back seat.”
IIHS is currently in the process of testing a variety of solutions to find the best fit for improvement going forward.