Cars From Ford, Honda, Nissan, and Toyota Top CR's Rear-Seat Safety Features Tests
Research shows that safety technology for rear seats hasn't kept up with improvements for front seats
By Keith Barry
For years, car buyers have been using safety ratings to determine what level of protection a vehicle offers its occupants in a crash. Until recently those ratings have largely focused on the people sitting up front, but now we see more rear-seat safety features available in new cars and recent used cars.
Consumer Reports now provides safety ratings for the rear seat, below, so car buyers can compare rear-seat safety features across popular new vehicles. Since we started the program in 2021, we’ve evaluated over 50 vehicles, and we’ll continue to expand our ratings over time. Our rear-seat safety features score is designed for occupants of all ages. It’s based on the results of our child-safety tests as well as the presence of key safety technology that helps protect both adults and kids. With this update we have scores for 54 tested vehicles from model-year 2022 and four from model-year 2023.
“The rear seat has to take into account all kinds of passengers who sit there, from infants and teens to adults and ride-sharing passengers of all ages,” says Emily A. Thomas, PhD, manager of auto safety at Consumer Reports. “But our analysis shows that many automakers don’t put the same safety features in the rear that they do in the front.”
For example, seat-belt pretensioners and load limiters are two mechanisms that reduce injuries and save lives in a crash. Although almost all new vehicles have this up front, based on our tally of 2022 model-year vehicles from the SaferCar database maintained by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, only about 51 percent of mainstream models have pretensioners and load limiters in the back seat. A little over 26 percent of vehicles have side airbags specifically designed to protect the pelvis and torso of rear occupants. And almost 35 percent of vehicles have seat-belt reminders for rear-seat occupants even though research suggests that passengers are less likely to buckle up in the back seat. These numbers have slightly improved since our tally of the 2021 model-year, but there is still much room for improvement.
But information about safety features in the back seat is often difficult—if not impossible—for consumers to find, Thomas says. So she and other engineers at CR’s Auto Test Center performed detailed evaluations, examined various data sources, and worked with automakers to find exactly which cars had which safety features.
“The message from our new rear-seat safety features testing is not that vehicles with lower scores are unsafe, but that they do not offer the same comparative margin of protection as those vehicles that earn higher marks,” she says. “For consumers who are regularly shuttling around passengers of all ages, our evaluations can make a big difference.”
What We Test
Our new score takes into account those specific safety concerns that are unique to back-seat passengers. For instance, kids 12 and younger should always be in the back seat, so we pay special attention to child safety. But we also look for proven safety features that can protect older kids and adult occupants as well.
Here’s what goes into the new rear-seat safety features score.
Car-seat fit: An improperly installed car seat might not fully protect your little one. That’s why we rate every vehicle we test on how easy it is to properly install child seats. We install infant, convertible, and high-back booster seats; check LATCH accessibility; and find out how many seats you can fit across the second row. We also evaluate the vehicle owner’s manual to ensure that key information is available and easy to follow.
Booster-seat use: We evaluate how easy it is to fit a booster seat, including whether it blocks access to the belt in an adjacent seat, whether it stays in place, how easy it is for kids to buckle themselves in, and whether the rear head restraint interferes with installation.
Rear-occupant alert: On average, 38 children die each year in hot cars, according to data collected by the advocacy group KidsAndCars.org. Many newer cars have systems to help prevent these deaths, and we started rating them when they first appeared on the market in 2016. Some systems simply remind drivers that a rear door has been opened before or during a trip, while others can sense the presence of someone in the rear seat when the car is locked.
Rear-seat minders: Almost all new cars will remind front-seat occupants to buckle up, but only some provide a similar warning and show exactly which seats have unbuckled passengers to encourage rear belt use. We give the most points to systems that don’t shut off until a belt is buckled and that start to chime if a passenger unbuckles during a trip.
Advanced rear restraints: Many recent safety advances designed to protect those up front aren’t yet available in the rear seat. As a result, belted rear passengers may be at a higher risk of fatal injury in a crash than belted front passengers, especially if they are over age 55. We give points to cars that have rear seat-belt pretensioners, which pull the seat belt tighter at the beginning of a crash, and load limiters, which let the seat belt spool out a little bit of slack to reduce the force the belt applies to the occupant’s chest. Both systems have been found to reduce injuries and save lives for front passengers. People are more likely to wear a belt if it’s comfortable, so we also give points for belts with height-adjustable upper anchors.
We also award points to vehicles with airbags that offer side-impact torso and pelvis protection to rear occupants. Today, this technology exists in only about a quarter of new vehicles. Looking to the future, our ratings will also include point additions for airbags designed for frontal impact or that protect rear occupants seated on the side of the vehicle opposite of where it’s hit, a feature that’s currently available for only front-seat passengers.
Rear head restraints: Head restraints prevent whiplash and other neck injuries during rear-end collisions. Some rear head restraints can be stowed away when the rear seat isn’t in use to improve driver visibility or fold a seat, but rear passengers who leave their head restraints stowed are at an increased risk of injury. So we give points to vehicles that make it more difficult to sit in a rear seat without an appropriate head restraint. Federal safety standards dictate a minimum height requirement for the outboard rear seats, but many rear center seats either don’t have a head restraint or have one that’s too low. So we also give points to cars with center-seat head restraints that also meet the minimum height requirement, thereby increasing protection for center-seat passengers.
Opportunities for Improvement
So far, no new vehicles get top ratings across all our scored categories. That is likely to change, says Jennifer Stockburger, director of operations at CR’s Auto Test Center, who oversees the rear-seat safety features program. “Automakers often update their vehicles in order to meet more stringent safety evaluations,” she says. “We’ve seen this happen with crash testing, and we look forward to seeing rear-seat safety feature scores improve as well.”
But a few vehicles are particularly lacking. One notable outlier is the Genesis brand. Although the GV70 SUV features a first-of-its-kind radar-based rear-occupant alert, all the brand’s vehicles lag behind their peers when it comes to rear-occupant protection. For example, no Genesis sedan or SUV has advanced rear restraints. Other family-friendly vehicles that score poorly include the Jeep Grand Cherokee L, Hyundai Santa Fe, and Hyundai Tucson SUVs, and the Kia Carnival minivan. None of these newly redesigned vehicles have advanced rear restraint systems, nor do they have rear belt minders, even though they’re designed to seat rear passengers comfortably.
On the other hand, some more budget-friendly vehicles of all shapes and sizes score well. The Toyota Sienna minivan; Nissan Rogue, Nissan Pathfinder, Ford Bronco 4DR, and Ford Bronco Sport SUVs; and Honda Civic sedan all get solid Overall Scores. So does the popular Ford F-150 XLT pickup truck.
Other safety organizations are paying attention to the rear seat as well. For example, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is currently performing frontal crash tests on new vehicles with a dummy in the back seat.
Regardless of how a vehicle scores in our evaluations, rear passengers should always wear seat belts, even on short trips and in ride-hailing vehicles like Uber and Lyft.
“All the safety technology in the world is useless if you don’t buckle up,” Thomas says.
Rear-seat safety features scores are available for CR-tested vehicles from the 2021 and newer model years. If the vehicle you’re interested in isn’t included, check back later. We will continue adding ratings for new vehicles as we test them.
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