Epidemiology of injuries sustained by rear-seat passengers in frontal motor vehicle crashes

Abstract

Advanced occupant protection systems in motor-vehicles (e.g., seat belts and airbags), while widely adopted for front-seat passengers, are either absent or offer disproportionally lower safety to rear-seat passengers in similar crashes. Optimization of advanced restraint systems for the rear-seat environment will require a detailed understanding of epidemiology and associated risk factors for injuries sustained by rear-seat passengers. Thus, the objective of the study is to use national level motor-vehicle travel and crash data to quantify rear-seat travel exposure, and determine the descriptive characteristics and the injury outcomes for rear-seat passengers involved in frontal collisions.