Driver at higher risk if back-seat passengers aren’t buckled up

By buckling up, back-seat passengers may be saving drivers’ lives, not just their own.

A new analysis of federal crash data found that when rear passengers sitting directly behind the driver skip the seat belt, they triple their odds of dying in a head-on crash and double the odds that the driver will be killed.

The finding comes from research led by Dr. Dietrich Jehle, vice chairman of emergency medicine at the University at Buffalo in New York, and colleagues at the university’s Center for Transportation Injury Research. By not being restrained, Jehle said, an adult in the rear passenger seat becomes a back-seat bullet, quadrupling the maximum force to the driver’s head and chest.

The researchers also calculated that if 95% of rear-seat passengers buckled up, they could save 800 lives and prevent more than 65,000 injuries each year.

The findings were released Jan. 20 along with a crash-test video in an effort to convince more states to require seat belts for back-seat adult passengers.

“In America, we have this sense that you can do what you want as long as it doesn’t impact anyone else,” Jehle said. “But the important point is by not buckling up in the back, you can kill other people.”

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Jane E. Allen