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

One in every of America’s two main automotive security testers made its crash exams harder this 12 months. The outcomes haven’t been encouraging. However more durable exams are supposed to push greater requirements, so the end result might drive improved security expertise in the long term.

Associated: IIHS Offers Fewer Security Awards After Toughening Crash Assessments

America’s Two Crash Testing Companies

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

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

The opposite just isn’t a authorities effort. A gaggle of automotive insurance coverage corporations 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 exams are usually considered more durable than authorities exams, partly as a result of it could modify its testing applications and not using a prolonged public remark interval.

That’s what it did this 12 months.

New, More durable Assessments

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

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

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

The IIHS revealed its first spherical of the brand new exams in March, utilizing a gaggle of midsize SUVs. All of the automobiles protected their driver properly, however the outcomes for rear-seat passengers had been worse. Simply 4 of the 13 SUVs examined earned a Good rating for safeguarding rear-seat passengers.

In the present day, the company launched comparable outcomes for a gaggle 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 take a look at,” mentioned IIHS President David Harkey. “In all of the small automobiles we examined, the rear dummy ‘submarined’ underneath the seat belt, inflicting the lap belt to experience up onto the stomach and rising the danger of inside accidents.”

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

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

Unhealthy Information Can Set off Modifications

The institute says it “launched the up to date reasonable overlap entrance take a look at final 12 months after analysis confirmed that in newer automobiles, the danger of a deadly damage is now greater 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 infrequently have “superior seat belts which can be hardly ever out there in again.”

With its more durable requirements, the institute could disgrace automakers into putting in higher seatbelts within the rear of most automobiles.

The Outcomes