IIHS focus on rear-seat passenger safety tests

The improvement process can start with the inclusion of better seat belt parts, crash tensioners and force limiters.

Just last month, IIHS stated that rear-seat passengers have a 46% higher risk of injury than those sitting in the front seats. The reason for this was that while most of the cars concentrate on the safety of the front occupants, only a handful extend the same level of safety to the rear passengers.

Now, according to reports, IIHS has turned its attention towards improving rear-seat safety through a moderate overlap crash test. The test will see the addition of an adult-size dummy in the rear seat of cars to find out how they fare.

Taking the Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla sedans (both secured matching scores across all tests) as examples, IIHS found that rear-seat passengers experience "submarining". This is when the lap belt moves up onto the abdomen and increases the risk of internal injuries.

The testing agency believes that automakers can take the data from their tests and work on improving the safety of rear-seat occupants. The improvement process can start with the inclusion of better seat belt parts, crash tensioners and force limiters.

Source: CarScoops