In Small Cars, Protection For Rear-Seat Passengers Isn’t The Best

New crash tests show that most small cars don’t provide good protection for rear-seat passengers. Five small cars recently evaluated all safeguarded people in the front seat, but none of them did particularly well to protect those in the back.

Those are the main findings of new ratings released on Thursday by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit financed by the insurance industry, developed to address the injuries most frequently seen in rear-seat passengers.

“These results highlight one of the key reasons that we updated our moderate overlap front crash test,” David Harkey, the Insurance Institute’s president, said in a statement. “In all the small cars we tested, the rear dummy ‘submarined’ under the seat belt, causing the lap belt to ride up onto the abdomen and increasing the risk of internal injuries.”

In the upgraded moderate overlap front crash test, a dummy was added in the back seat behind the driver.

The Honda Civic sedan and Toyota Corolla sedan mostly provided adequate protection in the back seat, aside from slippage by the rear dummy, and were rated acceptable. The Kia Forte, Nissan Sentra, and Subaru Crosstrek each garnered a poor rating, the safety group’s lowest, due to a moderate or high risk of head, neck or chest injuries.

The top rating in the institute’s assessments is good, followed by acceptable, marginal or poor. (No vehicles were rated good in this recent test.) Each vehicle tested received an overall rating and in ten sub categories, including safety and structure of occupant compartment, protections for preventing injuries to specific areas of the body of drivers and rear passengers, and effectiveness of restraints and airbags. (All five vehicles were rated poor in this last sub category.)

The safety group launched the updated crash test last year after research showed that in newer vehicles the risk of a fatal injury is higher for belted occupants in the rear than for those in front. It’s not because the rear has become less safe – it’s because the front seat offers enhanced protection due to improved airbags and advanced seat belts that are rarely available in the back.

The new test was designed to encourage manufacturers to improve rear-seat protection by focusing on the current shortcomings, to ensure that all seating positions are safe in frontal crashes.

But even with these developments, “the back seat remains the safest place for young children, who can be injured by an inflating front airbag,” researchers said.

For more information, including specific details for each of the vehicles evaluated, click here.