Back Seat Safety

READY FOR PRODUCTION The SCaRAB airbags offer protection no matter the front seat position.

The Future of Back-Seat Safety

When it comes to safety advances, the back seat may finally catch up with the front.

Unbelted rear-seat occupants are eight times more likely to be injured and twice as likely to die in a crash as belted rear-seat occupants, according to a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). Yet an IIHS survey found that only 74 percent of rear-seat passengers in private vehicles reported buckling up, compared with 91 percent of front-seat passengers.

“If rear occupants don’t wear their belts, they’re putting themselves at risk and putting other occupants in danger, too,” says Emily Thomas, an automotive safety engineer at Consumer Reports’ Auto Test Center.

Technology Takes a Back Seat

Until the mid-2000s, the back seat was always the safest place to sit. But crashtest evaluations, such as those done IIHS and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), have

OF THE NEW VEHICLES THAT CR HAS EVALUATED:

prioritized front-seat crash protection because that’s where people are more likely to sit. Those tests have led to a number of safety advances for the front seats that aren’t yet available in the back. Front passengers now get airbags that protect in front and side crashes. The front seat belts on most newer cars have pretensioners, which tighten the belt at the onset of a crash, and load limiters, which let the belt spool out a bit to reduce any jerking force that might injure the occupant’s chest.

As a result, the front seats of cars from the 2007 and newer model years are so safe that some occupants may have a slightly higher risk of death or injury if they sit in the back.

“Vehicle manufacturers are not incentivized with ratings to put tecnological innovations back there,” says Kristy Arbogast, co-scientific director of the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

The IIHS is already in the process of introducing a rear-seat front-crash test. Jessica Jermakian, its vice president for vehicle research, says that testing is already underway and that results will be available as soon as next year.

Congress ordered NHTSA to mandate rear seat-belt reminders in all new vehicles by 2015, but the agency is only now deciding how to implement the requirement after years of delays and a lawsuit filed by safety groups. A spokeswoman, Kathryn Henry, says NHTSA is conducting research into rear-seat occupant protection that it expects to be completed by the end of next year.

Safer Cars of the Future

As the auto industry and regulators begin to focus on rear-seat safety, researchers and auto makers are developing new ways to keep passengers safe. Here’s a look at what you might expect to see in the near future.

VIRTUAL CRASH TESTS: Ratings aren’t yet available for rear-seat safety, but researchers are already using computerized models of the human body to help fine-tune safety systems for rear passengers. For example, Jalaj Maheshwari of the Center for Injury Research and Prevention is using these human body models to evaluate how well booster seats protect children even if they’re not seated properly. “Children don’t sit in an ideal seating position,” he says. “They move about; they have a lot of energy.” So Maheshwari “places” human body models in seating positions that aren’t used in traditional crash tests. Other labs run simulations of occupants of above- or below-average weight; neither are represented by existing crash-test dummies.

REAR-SEAT AIRBAGS: Airbags prevent injury by spreading out crash forces and keeping occupants from striking hard surfaces. Mercedes-Benz already offers optional inflatable rear-seat belts, which are designed to reduce forces on the wearer’s chest. The 2021 Mercedes S-Class sedan will get rear airbags that deploy from the back of the front seats and are meant to offer additional head, neck, and shoulder protection for rear occupants. The automotive supplier ZF also has developed a production-ready rear airbag called the Self Conforming Rearseat Airbag, or SCaRAB, which the company says several automakers have expressed interest in installing in coming vehicles.

PERSONALIZED SAFETY: In the future, back seats may automatically adjust to meet the safety needs of occupants of all ages, shapes, and sizes, Arbogast says. Just as today’s vehicles have presets that can adjust seats for comfort, tomorrow’s vehicles may have presets that customize safety features for different occupants. And some of those adjustments may be automated. The driver’s seat in some Mercedes-Benz and Genesis vehicles can already automatically adjust to an ideal driving position when a driver inputs his or her height and weight.

Seat manufacturers and safety researchers are working on how to use that data to optimize safety features, too. “The position of the shoulder belt adjusts to you, the seat bottom you’re sitting on may adjust to you,” Arbogast says. “All of that is technologically possible. It costs money, it adds weight to the car, it’s not a simple calculus, but it’s one we can do.”

36%

have pretensioners in the rear seating positions.

38%

have load limiters in the rear seating positions.

LESS THAN

40%

have side airbags designed to protect the pelvis and torso of rear occupants.