Why Rear Passengers May Be Hurt More in Crashes, and What IIHS Wants Carmakers to Do about It

From Car and Driver

• The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) wants automakers to improve safety for rear passengers in frontal collisions.
• No U.S. standard or test exists to evaluate rear passenger safety in a frontal head-on crash.
• Current safety tech, such as inflatable shoulder belts, is proven to reduce injuries.

Automakers will be subject to a new crash test that, for the first time among standardized tests in the United States, will evaluate how well their cars protect passengers in the back seat during a frontal accident. The IIHS said it is developing the test after reviewing 117 accidents in the U.S. during which many buckled-up rear passengers were more injured-or outright killed-versus front passengers in frontal collisions.

Traditionally, the driving public has considered the back seat as the safest location in a frontal crash since it’s the furthest from impact and away from the dashboard, console, and other hard contact areas that can collide with a human body. But in crashes involving 2000 and newer vehicles that were no more than 10 model years old, rear passengers were likeliest to be hurt or killed from chest injuries, not by other parts of the vehicle or from a collapsing passenger space. The main culprit, ironically, may be the seatbelt.

“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 engineer Jessica Jermakian said in a statement.

The Euro NCAP is the only major testing authority that evaluates how a rear passenger fares in a frontal collision. Both the IIHS and NHTSA use a rear passenger dummy but only in side-impact tests. When IIHS completes the new test standard, the insurance-funded organization said it hopes to “prompt automakers to figure out what combination of technologies works best.”

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