Tuesday, March 14th 2023, 3:42 pm
Safety experts put midsize SUVs to the test looking at how those vehicles protect passengers sitting in the back seat.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety sent 13 mid-size SUVs crashing into a barrier at 40 miles per hour.
While all of them received good marks for protecting the driver and passenger in the front seat, but that changed when analysts looked at the back seat.
Of the 13 vehicles tested, only four models earned good ratings for protecting rear passengers: The Ford Explorer, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Subaru Ascent, and Tesla Model Y. The rest earned 'marginal' or 'poor' ratings.
"That's more or less what we expected,” said Raul Arbelaez, vice president of the Research Center at IIHS. He said the team anticipated those results because this is the first time they've analyzed back seat safety in this class. "We added this test because we have seen, both in real world data, and in our crash tests, that protection really could be improved in the rear seat,” Arbelaez said.
According to the IIHS, the risk of fatal injury is 46 percent higher for people in the back of the vehicle.
The reason isn't because the backseat has become more dangerous, but because restraint technologies have improved in the front. “One of the things we've seen for many years is protection getting better and better for front-seat occupants,” Arbelaez said. “We've seen airbags and better seat belts and improved structure.”
Arbelaez said the safety technology is available to improve the backseat. “With advanced seat belts, and better placement of say the anchor points of those seat belts, we believe that safety will reach levels in the front seat."
The IIHS expects the auto industry to make those changes in future vehicles.
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