American road safety advocates believe sitting in the front seat of a vehicle is a lot safer for passengers than in the backseat.

A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) highlighted how much the safety standards for the front passenger side of cars improved over the past few years.

Features such as specially designed seat belts and airbag systems have helped keep riders protected from potential injury due to collisions.

However, the same cannot be said about the rear passenger side, which has largely been left behind in terms of safety. People sitting in the backseat only have seat belts to protect them from impact during a car crash.

The IIHS is calling on car manufacturers to address the discrepancy in safety standards for front-seating and back-seating passengers.

"It's not that the rear seat has become less safe, it's that the front seat has become more safe over time," said David Harkey, president of the IIHS.

"We hope a new evaluation will spur similar progress in the back seat."

Car Safety Technologies

Car makers have incorporated several new features to improve the safety of their vehicles. Some of these were developed to prevent car crashes, such as forward collision warning systems with automatic emergency braking and electronic stability controls.

Meanwhile, other technologies were meant to improve the survivability of passengers in case of collisions. Seat belts and airbags are just some of the most popular and effective examples of these devices. They have helped saved the lives of tens of thousands of people involved in vehicular accidents.

In the United States, car makers are required by federal law to add frontal airbags to their vehicles. This eventually led to the development of various airbag systems capable of automatically deploying during car crashes. However, these designs mostly protect front-seat passengers, leaving those sitting in the back vulnerable to injuries.

In some cases, the seat belts that were meant to keep back-seat passengers safe during frontal collisions actually did more harm than good, according to the IIHS study.

The report reviewed 117 front-end crashes, where back-seat passengers aged 6 or older were killed despite wearing seat belts. The results were supported by data taken from the group's own collision tests.

The IIHS said a number of accidents saw people dying due to chest injuries, something that could have been prevented if vehicles had better designs and used reliable safety equipment.

Jessica Jermakian, a senior research engineer at the IIHS and lead author of the study, said their sample involved mostly survivable crashes, which underscore the need for safety experts to do a better job at restraining back-seat passengers.

Dangers Of Sitting In The Back Seat

People sitting at the back-seat do not have the benefit of having front-mounted airbags. They also cannot rely on rear seat belts so much since not all of them use pre-tensioners. These devices automatically tighten around passengers during a crash, keeping them from hitting other objects in the car such as another seat.

Rear seat belts also rarely include force limiters, which are designed to reduce the pressure on passengers' chests during an aggressive collision by allowing the device's webbing to slightly stretch.

Jermakian noted how crash tensioners work best when partnered with force limiters.

The IIHS report also suggests adding frontal airbags for back-seat passengers. These could be deployed from the roof of vehicles.