For rear-seat passengers, even the most secure small automotive isn’t as secure because it may very well be. In a brand new spherical of security assessments, simply two small sedans received a passing grade for shielding folks within the again from a frontal-impact crash.

One in all America’s two main automotive security testers made its crash assessments harder this yr. The outcomes haven’t been encouraging. However harder assessments are supposed to push larger requirements, so the result may drive improved security expertise in the long term.

Associated: IIHS Gives Fewer Safety Awards After Toughening Crash Tests

America’s Two Crash Testing Businesses

Many nations crash-test automobiles, however America advantages from the work of two security testing organizations.

One is the federal authorities’s Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Administration (NHTSA). It was not concerned on this spherical of assessments.

The opposite is just not a authorities effort. A bunch of automotive insurance coverage firms funds their very own security lab — the Insurance coverage Institute for Freeway Security (IIHS). Insurers make more cash when accidents are rarer and fewer lethal, so the insurance coverage business makes use of the IIHS to push the auto business to develop safer automobiles.

The institute’s assessments are typically thought to be harder than authorities assessments, partly as a result of it might modify its testing packages and not using a prolonged public remark interval.

That’s what it did this yr.

New, Harder Exams

The IIHS has lengthy carried out a frontal-overlap crash check that represents a car crashing into one other barely offset, just like the crashes frequent in intersections. The check occurs at about 40 mph and mimics a automotive crashing right into a car of comparable measurement and weight.

In 2023, the company added a dummy to the rear seats, representing a 12-year-old youngster.

The company charges autos as Good, Acceptable, Marginal, or Poor based mostly on the chance of accidents to the motive force and, now, second-row passenger.

The IIHS published its first round of the new tests in March, using a group of midsize SUVs. All of the autos protected their driver effectively, however the outcomes for rear-seat passengers had been worse. Simply 4 of the 13 SUVs examined earned a Good rating for shielding rear-seat passengers.

Immediately, the company launched related outcomes for a bunch of compact automobiles. They did worse.

Not one of the 5 automobiles examined earned a Good rating.

“These outcomes spotlight one of many key causes that we up to date our reasonable overlap entrance crash check,” mentioned IIHS President David Harkey. “In all of the small automobiles we examined, the rear dummy ‘submarined’ below the seat belt, inflicting the lap belt to trip up onto the stomach and growing the danger of inner accidents.”

Submarining, the institute explains, causes the seatbelt “to slip from the hip bones onto the stomach, the place it might trigger inner accidents.

Within the three poor-rated autos, measurements taken from the rear dummy additionally confirmed a reasonable or excessive danger of head, neck or chest accidents.”

Unhealthy Information Can Set off Modifications

The institute says it “launched the up to date reasonable overlap entrance check final yr after analysis confirmed that in newer autos, the danger of a deadly damage is now larger for belted occupants within the rear than for these in entrance.”

That’s not as a result of rear-seat security is getting worse. It’s as a result of front-seat security is getting higher. Entrance-seat passengers have airbags in entrance of them and sometimes have “superior seat belts which are not often obtainable in again.”

With its harder requirements, the institute might disgrace automakers into putting in higher seatbelts within the rear of most automobiles.

The Outcomes