The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found small passenger cars can’t protect people in the back seats as well as they cover people in the front seats when they hit. The IIHS looked at five small cars for the 2023 model year: the Honda Civic, the Toyota Corolla, the Kia Forte, the Nissan Sentra, and the Subaru Crosstrees. They all passed the mild overlap crash test. Only the Civic and the Corolla got an overall “Acceptable” grade on the crash test. None of the cars got a “Good” score. The IIHS said that the other three were Poor. The low marks are because the protections for backseat passengers are out of date. The IIHS found that the back dummy in all five of the cars tested would “submerge” after a crash, making the damage more likely to be fatal. Submarining is when the lap part of the seatbelt goes up into the abdomen. This makes it more likely that an accident will cause internal injuries. These results are due to more safety rules for front-seat passengers, like better seatbelts and airbags, rather than fewer safety tools for backseat passengers. The IIHS wants this new technology to be used in the back seats. Even though the research says otherwise, the IIHS says that small children are safer in the rear seats, where they are less likely to be hurt by an airbag that goes off in the front.
