Stronger Protection for Back Seat Passengers (11:06)
Automakers significantly improving safety measures, but almost exclusively for the front seats
Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey Snyder discusses improving automobile safety with David Harkey, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
This morning on BRN, stronger protection for backseat passengers. Joining me now to discuss this and a lot more, David Harkey is the president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. David, always great to see you.
Thanks for joining us in the program this morning.
David Harkey, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
Glad to do it. Thanks for the opportunity, Jeff.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, in your organization, you do a lot of testing around vehicles. We’re going to talk about some of that in a few minutes. But let me just ask you a basic top line question.
I would assume, I’m making an assumption, but our vehicles, the vehicles here in the United States, automobiles, are they getting safer each and every year?
David Harkey, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
They are, and that’s part of our mission in terms of trying to drive safety in the auto industry is to continually keep raising the bar. We look for opportunities through real-world crash data with respect to where do we think we can go next in terms of pushing the automakers to make their vehicles even safer. And having done that now for 30 years, we can definitely say that we’ve made some changes and they’re getting safer every year.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, you know, I mean, the cars are amazing. They have so many safety features. You know, I think back when I started driving in 1988, I think it was, yeah, 1988, cars have dramatically changed and we have digital, we have cameras, we’ve got automatic anti-lock braking systems.
I mean, it really is amazing to see the increases there. And I know that your organization has been a big part of that. David, you know, one area I do want to ask you about is the backseat of a vehicle.
More and more SUVs in particular have second and third rows. You guys did a lot of, your organization did a lot of testing around that. Are these seats as safe as they could be?
David Harkey, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
They can always be safer. You know, and I think that’s kind of our mantra with regards to everything that we do. Everything can always be safer.
And, you know, that’s what we try to push for. And a few years ago, we were analyzing crash data, looking at fatality risk of occupants in the vehicle. And what we were starting to see was that automakers have done a great job of improving safety in the front seat.
We put seatbelt technologies into the front seat, and we’ve added airbags into the front seat. And we were starting to see the fatality risk for that belted adult shift from the front seat to the rear seat. And that’s why we really started focusing then on how do we improve safety in the rear seat of the vehicle.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And that backseat, I mean, you know, as these cars have gotten bigger, wider, I’ve noticed a lot of the luxury vehicles have gotten wider. Even a car like a Honda Accord has gotten wider. It looks like they can fit more.
It’s almost like a clown car now. They can fit more and more people. A lot of people sit in the back.
I would imagine it’s pretty important, especially that’s where a lot of people keep their babies in a baby seat or a car seat, right? I mean, it’s really important to keep that part of the car safe. And just safety reasons.
I’m sorry, go ahead, David.
David Harkey, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
No, and I think there’s two parts to that. You hit upon something that’s really, really important there, Jeff. The backseat is where we often have the most vulnerable passengers, right?
And so whether it’s our young or perhaps elderly parents that may be traveling with us, that’s where they are often positioned. And we often have child seats. So one of the challenges with the backseat is that diversity of passenger that’s back there.
And so you’ve got to create a seat that can accommodate all of these different passengers. But at the same time, you want to continue to make it as safe for every one of those passenger types that are going to be back there.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, I mean, ergonomics, obviously important. We all had different backs. We had different heights.
David, does it make a difference when we talk about backseats? I always think about now in today’s luxury SUVs, you’ve got that middle row, that second row, but also now the third row. Some of those third rows, David, they kind of pop up and they come up and down.
That’s got to be a challenge for manufacturers to be able to have a retractable seat, but also have it be as safe.
David Harkey, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
Yeah, and so you’re getting at another point. It’s back to that versatility side of things, right? And so the auto industry has to build in that capability to be able to use that as cargo space when you need it, but then to be able to use it as passenger occupant space.
And so you want to make that as safe as possible. And right now, we’re focused really on that second row, right behind the driver. That’s where our emphasis is.
That’s where our testing is. And dealing with that third row may be the next generation of tests that we really have to focus on, because that’s a whole different issue, a range of issues, really, that we’re going to have to deal with when we start talking about that third row seat.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And David, how receptive are the manufacturers, whether they be United States brands or national, international brands, excuse me, are they receptive to the feedback that you and your team provide to say, hey, maybe you need to strengthen this area, maybe you need a more solid beam here. You know, I’m a lay person, I don’t know. But I mean, are they receptive to making the improvements that you’re determining might need to be made?
David Harkey, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
Yeah, I think they are. I think one of the things to always remember is that automakers want to sell safe cars, right? I mean, safety still sells.
It is still important to a lot of consumers. And so they do not want to put products out into the marketplace that are not safe. And they prefer to put products out into the marketplace that are winning awards from organizations like ours, right?
That are at the top of the list of vehicles in terms of safety. And so I would say that they are very collaborative in working with us. They know a lot about where we are going, where our roadmap is going with respect to vehicle safety.
And they often work with us in the very early stages of some of the research that we do and actually offer to help with that. And so, you know, they want to see positive safety outcomes just as much as we do. And that’s, to us, is very encouraging and very important.
It’s how we get everybody moving in the same direction to improve safety.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, pun intended on that one. David, in terms of your next round of testing, you kind of hinted that maybe there might be a next iteration. Obviously, strengthening the safety of the back row or the second row, excuse me, is very important.
But how do you keep building and iterating and making testing better?
David Harkey, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
Yeah, so if you think about the cycle of testing that we go through, we start by looking at real-world crash data, right? What’s happening in the real world with regards to the performance of these vehicles in different types of crashes. And that includes both the occupants in the vehicle as well as looking at the impacts on those outside the vehicle, pedestrians and bicyclists, for example.
And that’s very important when we start talking about collision avoidance technology. So we look at these real-world scenarios and then that drives what tests then we want to develop where we believe we have an opportunity to improve safety in a particular sector. And then we run those tests and then the automakers, hopefully, make some changes in the design of their vehicles or in the capabilities of their vehicles with technology.
And then over time, we’re able to then go back and evaluate, again, using real-world crash data, if those changes have been effective at driving real-world outcomes. And then we continue the cycle. We continue to look for more opportunities and we keep raising the bar.
And we do that over and over and over again. And we have not yet run out of opportunities to make the vehicle safer.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, I can imagine. I don’t, you know, everyone has a goal for perfection, David, but, you know, it’s rarely achieved. David, I have to ask you, you know, the crash test dummies, I just want to ask you this because, you know, I’m familiar back in the seventies with watching the cars crash in the concrete poles, but these aren’t just mannequins.
These are very sophisticated pieces of technology. They probably have thousands of different metrics that they measure.
David Harkey, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
Yeah, yeah, they are. It’s funny, we refer to them sometime as very simple, but very complex tools at the same time because they’re loaded with sensors and they’re loaded with sensors in a certain way, depending on the type of crash that we are conducting. So if we’re conducting a frontal test, we have sensors, for example, in the chest area, the torso region, so that we can measure the force on the chest as well as head and neck sensors, so we can see what happens with regards to whiplash and other sorts of events like that.
When we’re running a side crash test, we have sensors in different places on the side of the dummy that are measuring forces in that direction. So they are very specific to the type of tests that we are running and they are very sophisticated. And I always say they’re the hardest working staff at our institute because they take a beating and then we repair them.
You know, sometimes we have to repair them and recalibrate them. We put them right back in there and they do their job again, over and over.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, do they ever complain and is there a crash test dummy union that they belong to?
David Harkey, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
If they start complaining, I’m not sure that our technicians in our crash lab are going to be very happy.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
You might want to check what people are, if they’re not hallucinating that they’re talking. Anyway, David, great work as always. Thanks so much for joining us and we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon.
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Stay safe, keep on saving, and don’t forget, roll with the changes.