You Wear Your Seatbelt, but Do You…

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…adjust your seat back and head restraint?

Severe crashes from the rear are relatively uncommon.  Depending on the statistics you find, fatal rear end impacts are usually well under 10% of all serious crashes.  On the other hand, rear-enders are a lot more common at lower speeds, in crashes with less severe injuries.  Whiplash injuries are relatively common in these types of impacts.  While they are rarely fatal, they can cause a lot of health issues.  The best way to prevent or reduce the severity of these types of injuries is to make sure your vehicle seat back and head restraint are adjusted correctly.  This website has a great pictorial guide:

http://www.safety.ed.ac.uk/resources/General/Driving_posture.shtm

The IIHS also does a test for safety in rear impacts.  In a future blog, I’ll discuss some flaws with this testing and why the passenger really needs to actively adjust their own seat to protect themselves.

 

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