Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | Trial

Kids in the back seat: are children in the rear seat safe? Does the rear-seat structure protect them? How about a vehicle's seat-belt system? The possibilities for injury seem endless, but safety should never be an option.

Article Excerpt
Motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of death for children in the United States. In 2002, 1,543 child passengers ages 14 and younger died in crashes, and approximately 270,000 were injured. (1) That's an average of 6 deaths and more than 721 injuries a day. (2)

In the late 1980s, automobile manufacturers began to install front-seat air bags in vehicles. Because the overly aggressive air bags were designed to deploy in low- velocity accidents, children in front seats began to be killed in crashes that they otherwise would have survived.

In response, Parents for Safer Air Bags and automobile manufacturers, among others, petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for warnings about the risks of letting children ride in the front seat. (3) The resulting visor-mounted warning instructs drivers that the safest location for children 12 years old and younger is the back seat.

Following that effort, an extensive advertising campaign expanded on the message: The auto industry helped fund "ABC's of Air Bag Safety--The Back Is Where It's At," a campaign to educate drivers on the safety benefits of placing children in the back seat and convince children that it is "cool" to sit in back. (4)

Chrysler played a prominent role in this campaign and partnered with the American Automobile Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The groups sent education packets to more than 300,000 teachers, principals, school boards, and PTA presidents--representing about 160,000 day care facilities and private and public schools across the United States. (5)

Following the auto industry's lead, many states passed laws mandating that children under certain ages sit in the back seat. (6)

Although automakers are now instructing drivers that the back seat is the safest place for children, they have paid little attention to designing a safer backseat environment. Further, there are no performance standards for rear-seat restraint systems in the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, and no federal safety requirements exist to test the safety of rear-seat lap and shoulder belts when used on a child dummy or with aftermarket child seats.

Rear-seat lap and shoulder belts are designed to perform on the 50th percentile male dummy, which stands 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighs 172 pounds. Little consideration is given to the performance of these restraints on children ages 4 to 12.

By the 1990s, the automotive industry had many warnings from the government and the medical community of serious injury risks involving rear-seat lap/shoulder belts and lap-only belts being used by children under 12. (7)

Children who survive crashes often suffer abdominal, spine, and head injuries; sometimes, two children seated next to each other both die or are seriously injured. (8) The facts in these cases are predictable: One or more children were belted in the back seat when the accident occurred. Although the rest of the passengers suffered relatively minor injuries, the children in the rear seat were paralyzed or killed, even though that section of the vehicle suffered no direct impact or compartment collapse. (9) The parents, who escaped the crash with minor injuries, wonder how this could have happened to their properly restrained children.

The fact is that rear seats and restraints in many vehicles are not safe for children, especially those from 4 to 12 years old. Any auto accident in which a belted child is seriously injured requires an investigation into the rear seat belts and seats to determine if they played a role in the child's injury or death. Different types of accidents pose varying risks, depending on the success or failure of certain features:

* the seatbelt

* the vehicle seat, including its structure...